Jeremiah's School of Levitation

New Watch

2009-01-21T10:40:00.001-08:00

New show, new day, new watch. What happened on the old watch is clearly documented. You can smell it if you get close enough to the smoldering foreign streets, the institutions of finance, the empty, foreclosed houses. You can especially whiff the stench of the skin and breath of the treacherous, lecherous, unnameable people who perpetrated it all. For their troubles, they should be rewarded with a taste of bread and water for a few dozen years. But, as justice must apparently wait, we then put all this is behind us, and I mean it literally. We now move on forward, with a host of lessons learned, hopefully, and we can salute the old watch (remember, some salutes only require one finger), and we can turn our eyes to the new watch. What will happen on the new watch? How much are you willing to invest in making sure that nothing evil happens this time? Are you willing to work as hard as you did (those, that is, who worked for Obama) to craft this new watch and make this into something you can be proud of? Something of which you can say: "Yes, that DID happen on my watch!" Because, it's not just the new guy's watch. It's yours too. Stay vigilant, keep all three eyes open, and let's not miss this opportunity to play "citizen helping citizen" for a while.

The Year of Never Before

2009-01-19T22:04:00.001-08:00

I am in high anticipation for this inauguration. When have I ever said that? NEVER! I mean, I remember seeing Bill Clinton dance with his wife and play the sax, but I’m sure that was just a CNN replay. When it was happening live, I was elsewhere, like at work or pulling weeds. I have never actually been to an inauguration party. But, look maw, I'm going to an inauguration party, complete with biscuits and history! Man, oh man. Pinch me, I must be dreaming. No, pinch me there. Yeah, THERE!

In other news, the Arizona Cardinals are in the Super Bowl. The last time they were there was NEVER! I am willing to bet that no one bet that they’d be in the Super Bowl this year. At the beginning of the season, even a Cardinal fan would have been pat on the back and directed to the nearest detox clinic had they proclaimed that the Cardinals would be in the Super Bowl. Get out your pinchers!

Me oh my, but how many more NEVER BEFORES do we have coming? Could this be the Year of Never Before? Goodness gracious, I. Brace yourselves! I'm bracing myself, with a grin!

How Slippery is Your Slope?

2009-01-06T13:17:00.000-08:00

I just want to warn the public that I'm likely to begin the propagation of yet another annoying phrase. I just read the Lake Superior State University's list of the most annoying phrases of the year, some of which, I must admit, I hadn't heard before, until I started listening a little more carefully. One of the phrases, "not so much" (as in "Ben Stiller's movies make me laugh; Adam Sandler's, not so much") was transparent to me, up until I read the list and, then, I heard "not so much" less than a few hours later, coming from who I consider to be one of the most original conversationalist friends that I have, one who would rarely utter anything trite. Yikes!

Another one, "iconic" I have actually thought of using a few times, but never really heard it. We'll, I'll be a monkey's uncle, I heard it come out of the mouth of one of my favorite progressive talk show hosts just a day later, as he described the admiration he felt about the Unknown Rebel guy who stood in front of the tanks at Tiananmen Square. Double yikes! So, people do use those phrases! And, since the people who do are some of my favorite, it's high time (jeez, the cliches) I started doing it myself. In fact, I think I'll just get one rolling, one that I've heard a few times and one which, I think, is appropriate in a lot of cases. And, that's what I'm here to warn you about.

The phrase I plan to slog around is: "slippery slope."

That's it. I plan to use it, frequently. I will use it, most often, to refer to a plan, suggestion, action, or opinion that, in my judgement, might be a little difficult to accomplish or to make clear to everyone concerned.

"You can try to lose weight by eating nothing but cupcakes, but that's a slippery slope."

"Well, covincing her that vegetables are as traumatized by sudden death as cows are is a slippery slope argument since, well, carrots don't wail in pain. At least, not audibly."

I'll also most use it in cases where it may not even metaphorically fit (or, in other words, I'll employ it as "slippery slope usage"). And, I definitely won't use it in a case where it is most appropriate, as in, where someone is actually physically trying to ascend an icy incline. Oh no, not then!

Anyway, I've been warning my friends. I am on a quest to get a phrase on the most annoying list, and, when you read that list next year, I want you to say "Oh, yeah. 'Slippery slope' IS annoying. I know this guy that says it all the friggin' time! I no longer talk to him, nor allow my children to!"

I'm guessing that, if nothing else, my quest will inspire others to out-annoy me just for the sake of drowning me out. However, will it inspire them to admire me? Not so much.

New Year's Revolutions

2009-01-01T09:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, a cashier asked me if I had made any new year's resolutions. Before I learned that I was just part of her experiment, I went ahead and answered her. I told her that, yeah, I had one thing I was going to work on, but that it was a slippery slope sort of thing. I was going to work on being more honest this year. Not that I go around telling lies, but that I do go around hiding how I really feel or what I really think, just so the conversation won't turn into wet cats or bad weather. I tend to just either keep my mouth shut, or agree, or go along, just to keep the peace. If someone disturbs me at my work, I tend to flow with the disturbance, because, who wants to offend? I told the cashier that this is a slippery slope, however, because the line between "I'm just being honest" and "I'm a real a*hole" is very thin. You gotta watch that or, by Jan. '10, you may find that your list of friends has dwindled down to radio talk show hosts and pets.

But, really, I do plan to be more honest, not to detriment of anyone, but rather, to benefit of myself. As I grow older, and admittedly more cynical, I have to be aware of what I decide to involve my time in. I got an upturned nose from a coworker when I told him that my iPod does not contain a single song that I can't listen to, which seems like a no-brainer, but he was arguing that I should just fill it with albums and, later, comb through the diamonds and the dross. I say, don't let the dross on there. In my youth, I could have wasted three or four minutes listening to a song that I really didn't like because, well, the one after it was great. Now, with my time running out, I don't have three or four minutes to waste on a passable tune. iPods eliminate the requirement to slog through filler, unlike cassettes or lp's, so, why not invoke the power of "delete" and leave the filler on the floor, to be vacuumed up later? Oh, how that elicited a gasp.

Anyway, that being a weak, but representative example, this year I do plan to eliminate the dross from my days. The dross interruptions, the dross music, the dross moments, the dross pleasantries, the dross sentimentalities, and the dross agreements. By the end of the year, I may only be able to clutch the voice of Randi Rhodes and the puffiness of my teddy bear as my "only real friends" OR I may, myself, become somebody else's "only REAL friend." Who knows?

By the way, after my speech, the cashier informed me that she'd asked everyone that day what their new year's resolutions would be and an overwhelming majority said that they don't do resolutions. I was one of only three people who said they did. So, I was just, in the end, proof of her theory that resolutions are passe and useless. So, I begin 2009 already in the distinct, chronic minority!

Return of Scarlet

2008-12-30T12:56:00.000-08:00

My dreams are starting to scare me. Not in the nightmare sense of, say, the Joker coming to get me to show me that pencil disappearing act again. Except, he's going to use one of those fat pencils I used to use in 1st grade. No, not a dream like that. This set of dreams I'm having are disturbing on a different level. Last night, I dreamed of an old friend of mine, a girl, who we'll call Scarlet. Scarlet lived across the hall from me in the dorms way back in college and, though nothing incredibly significant passed between us, here I was dreaming about her (well, ok, there was one MINOR thing that passed between us: she was my girlfriend's roommate and, one night, my girlfriend and I decided it was business time and we went about our business with Scarlet asleep, or, so we thought--we later found out, from "friends", that Scarlet actually wasn't asleep and, didn't even have her eyes closed! Ha! Ha! Crap!).

Anyhow, Scarlet appeared in my dream not a day older than when we last spoke, roughly 18 years ago. But, in my dream, she now had a sister, who looked a lot like her, and who was, in the dream, extremely interested in me. She hugged me, gazed at me as I spoke to Scarlet, and grinned whenever I looked at her. Now, Scarlet didn't have a sister, as far as I knew, and I never had reason to wonder if she did. And, if I did, why, 18 years later, does my mind decide to ponder on it? And, married as I am, what's the deal with the imaginary sister of a marginal friend courting me in a dream? Didn't she check my marital status at the door of my imagination before she entered this dream? Do I need to hire someone else to guard my dreamgate because, apparently, some strange folks are getting in. Not that it hasn't happened before, but usually, even that three-faced ferret with the British accent that got in last week can be traced back to a couple of credible thoughts that got run together somewhere in my head. But, Scarlet's sister? From whence did she come and, even more importantly, what does she mean?

Look what's under the snow!

2008-12-29T11:25:00.000-08:00

We got a bunch of snow here in the metropolitain area of the Pacific Great Northwest Region. At my place, about 8 inches total fell over a few days and that effectively crippled the entire city. Side streets in my hood never got plowed, many cars languished sideways in ditches and against rails, the trash collectors never came (two weeks and counting--the crows are having a party--this is the Great Garbage Event that has been written about in crow lore), and even mall parking lots never got fully plowed so that Christmas shoppers were constantly kept from Christmas shopping (all the while, retailers cry about a downturn in business--hey, I've got 100 bucks I'd love to spend if I can just get my car into your lot!).

Anyway, that's no excuse for me being gone for a year, but it does offer up a metaphor for my absence. I've been snowed in by life itself. Nothing tragic, thank (insert deity of your choice), but certainly weighty. And, I know there have been folks wanting to read, if I would only write, by golly, and I apologize. But, I'm struggling back awake here and I realize, somehow, that part of the therapy I need is actually not to stop writing, but to write more, dang it! There's plenty to say. So, let me brush off the slush and get back to it, albeit slowly. Yea, soon the cold drifts of my absence will be warmed away by the sunshine of my presence and soon, green patches of my words will sprout the flowers of brief, but levitating, coherence. Or, something like that.

Where's the bathroom?

2008-12-17T00:09:00.000-08:00

Okay. Um. This place looks familiar. Like I've been here before. Like I've squatted here afore. Pretty comfortable! Who kept the bed warm? Nice! Okay, I'll stay a bit. I just need to know two things. Where's the fridge? Where's the bathroom? And, who's got the remote? Okay, I need to know three things.

Oh No -- NaNo

2007-10-30T22:59:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm doing the NaNoWriMo thing this year. It starts on Nov. 1 and I'm going to owe myself 1600 words a day for 30 days. As my regular readers who are left are probably thinking, "Yeah, it's more like Na-NO WAY for him." Yeah, I know that I've been amiss in the writing, which is exactly why I'm signing myself up for some serious novelling for the next month, so that I will be forced to produce syllables and sentences.

So, the result next month this time should be a book of some sort, but, likely, a little less than an active blog, though I will try to update as frequently as I can. In fact, the exact opposite of what I fear may happen -- I may end up writing like a damn fool, throwing words around like they're mere exhalations. I did come to some sort of revelation today after I had my head scalped by my barber -- it's possible that the only way I'm ever going to retain anything about my life is if I record it somehow. My brain is just too damn scattered to be counted on to serve me as an effective tool for conversation, recollection, and realization. I'm going to ultimately need to read what I'm thinking. That may explain my unnatural love for note-taking applications and pens and recording myself. I'm simply going to need to write everything down, or recite it into a microphone, in order for any word or work that graces my flighty brain to actually survive.

So, a de-levitating I go. And, it's likely some of you may go down with me because I'll be reporting from the depths. I promise I won't disappear. I'll just get real dark.

Down umbrella!

Coffee with Sugar

2007-10-25T10:54:00.000-07:00

What do you get when you cross Hooters "breast-aurant" with Victoria's Secret with a coffee shop?

I know! I know! Call on me!

See ...

Coffee shops in this corner of The Great Northwest are ubiquitous, as you've likely heard. ("How ubiquitous are they?"says the audience). They are so ubiquitous that, if they were alligators, then every resident here would be missing at least two limbs because we'd practically be stepping on them and, if we were lucky enough to dodge one gator, we'd trip on the other one behind him.

With coffee shops being in such abundance, you can also expect that shop themes are starting to wear thin. Most joints just go with the multiple padded seating options, arranged as if you were in a discussion group, and they leave it at that. Some places go for more Paris coffeehouse style, others try to look like flophouse lobbies, and still others try the library look.

And, for coffee patrons who are just looking to arm themselves for the freeway, right before they have to merge, you've got your enclosed coffee stands sitting like satellites in random parking lots, like those old Fotomat booths. Even these booths try some stylistic touches. I've seen them dressed up as log cabins or with signs asking the trivia question of the day (which, I'm thinking, no one can get it together enough to answer UNTIL they've had their coffee), but essentially, it's nothing riveting, because, in the end, all we want is our freeway fix.

Enter one enterprising booth, determined to get us our fix alright. Their theme is as I stated at the beginning. They have combined the girls of Hooters with the garments of Victoria's Secret with, what seems like overkill at this point, caffeine. Yikes! It's your coffee served to you by your favorite pole dancer. It's a steaming cup of joe handed to you by the very cause of steam herself. For a certain segment of the crowd, this is a brilliant idea.

I actually never noticed this particular stand (really!) until my wife told me about it and, with her generous blessing, I had to try it out. Well, I'll say this: it works as designed. I drove up in line behind, surprise surprise, a couple of guys in pickups, hoping that they may score their own special pick up. When my turn came, I rolled up to the window and Barbarella leaned WAY too far out to take my order. I kept my head facing to the front. I couldn't even look at her, and,
if I did, I wouldn't be able to see her for I would have fallen into the valley of the shadow of cleavage (okay, so I looked for just a MILLISECOND). I mumbled "double Americano please."

When she went inside to make the coffee, I decided to take a look at the inner workings of this booth. There was another barista in there and, I swear, I at first thought she was a lingere mannequin. She was wearing something like a pink and black nightie that looked like it was sewn onto her. Man. I glanced at Barbarella and confirmed that she too had an outfit
that made the St. Pauli girl look like she was dressed for a funeral. She had on this miniskirt that seemed to begin and end at the same place. JEEZ!

Okay, whew, so Barbarella finally comes back with my coffee and I negotiated a very awkward exchange where I tried to grab the cup without touching her, or looking directly at her, and, all the while, trying to keep from trembling. It was an agonizing five seconds. We finally worked out the exchange of coffee and money and she gave me her thanks and my change,
and I tipped her (No, it's NOT what you're thinking -- I put the money in the TIP JAR!).

I drove off, laughing now because, man, as titillating and brilliant an idea this was, it was ridiculous.

I've not gone back there because, really, I actually despise strip joints and Hooters-type enterprises simply because I refuse to pay for titillation. Overtly paying money for sex, or to have another human act all heated up in front of me, or expose themselves to me, doesn't do it for me. I prefer to EARN my titillation, thank you.

Then again, isn't it really just the coffee I'm paying for? Hmmm....

Well, because this place is a few miles from my house, and kind of out-of-the-way, I've never really thought much more about going there.

But, now, they've put one up close to my house. What's interesting about it is this new place is just about 100 feet FROM a strip joint, which made me chuckle. I wonder if the strip joint is something of a farm team for the coffee shop or if doing a double shift at the strip joint means dancing until 2 and then serving coffee from 5 to noon. And, if this idea catches on, I can see a whole new type of car wash springing up next.

Ten Ounces of Prevention

2007-10-22T23:34:00.000-07:00

Aye, matey! I am hereby cured of the pleurisy! I may now continue me plunderings about the land and sea without pain or hindrance! Watch my size! I'm dangerous!

However, my ravage upon the unsuspecting was very quickly curtailed this fair morn when I stopped my vessel to go use a public toilet facility, for, as I approached the urinal, I was greeted with a big, yellow sign that screamed at me, in big black blocky letters:

"Please do not urinate on the floor."

I, for one, was glad that someone decided to remind users that floors, though they offer much more surface area, are generally for walking upon and, occasionally, as probably was the case in this particular restroom, sleeping in a heap upon.

However, if this place actually needed such a sign to assure that it remained a relatively clean room of rest, then I had to admit that the sign probably could have been a little more encompassing. Maybe something like "Please do not smear feces on walls" or "Please do not clog toilet and then flush several times" or "Please be aware of how damaging to your political career it could be if you decide to solicit other men in stalls adjacent to you."

I'm not of the "the floor is always an option" crowd, so the sign didn't sway me (no pun intended), but I was glad to see it and, so, it qualified as my levitation celebration of the day, which tells you a little about my day.

Aye! Still His Mighty Chest Does Pain Him!

2007-10-19T11:38:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm still suffering from my pleural issues. I don't feel much like moving around, and I'm not good for the kids because whenever a bolt of pain erupts across my chest, my Tourette's acts up and I snarl out words that, normally, I reserve for errant drivers, conservatives, or for bad Dallas Cowboys plays. The kids act shocked and run from the room in faux horror, and that just makes me laugh, which in turn aggravates my pleural issues, which in turn makes me curse again. It's a vicious, vicious sphere.

By the way, some of you may be confused as to what exactly hurts, so, merely as a service, I obtained a recent photo of myself and I circled the region that is causing me the pain. I hope the photo clears things up.

Ha! Ha! Ha! (URGH!! SON-OF-A ... !!!)

Avast! A Wee Bit of the Pleurisy, He Has

2007-10-17T11:06:00.000-07:00

Today (urgh) not much writing (ackee!) is going to happen (oof!) because I have a case of pleurisy, which, according to the Mayo clinic "occurs when the double membrane (pleura) that lines the chest cavity and surrounds each of your lungs becomes inflamed (their words)" and "feels like someone is slamming a big, wet sea bass into your sternum at 50 mph (my words)."

This pain is somewhat (veeep!) random, though I can count on it happening when I move, even if when typing, I move my hands too much (gish!). But, even when perfectly still, the speeding fish will get me at any special time, without (teeek!) provocation.

Years ago, when I first contracted this wonderful thing, I'd never heard of pleurisy. So, when my doctor said I had it, I thought I'd somehow contracted some ancient ailment that I thought went out with Blackbeard the pirate, or something.

"Pleurisy?" I said to the doc. "Didn't we eradicate that about 300 years ago? What's the treatment? You going to bleed me?"

Turns out, of course, I was just delirious and that, actually, pleurisy is quite common, even if you aren't a pirate.

So, I'm going to take some pain (whooop!) killers and get back to levitating sometime tomorrow because (uhhh!) it hurts to hold up that umbrella ... (guh!!).

You Got Your Job All Over You

2007-10-16T00:19:00.000-07:00

I decided to celebrate another day of living today by getting an extra
large cup of my Herb-O-Charged 7-11 coffee and, as I went up to pay,
some patrons in front of me unknowingly blessed me with a new
Jerimi-oliday idea.

See ...

The folks in front of me were all painters. I knew this because, using
my keen powers of perception, I could see that they were wearing
paint-splattered clothes. Now, my first coffee-deficient thought was
"Why would they get up in the morning and put THAT on first thing?"
Well, almost suddenly, I caught a whiff of sensifying coffee and I
realized, of course, why they dressed like that. If they're going to be
painting all day, why the poop would they wear clean clothes? They're
just going to end up paint-splattered anyway. Duh on me!

But, then, that's when the head gears got to cranking. I told myself,
"Hey, Self! How cool would it be if everyone did that? You know, in the
morning, just wear clothes that will resemble what your clothes will
look like at the end of the day anyway! Or, even further, just go in
behaving like you're going to end up behaving anyway!"

We'll call it "Go to Work Looking Like You're Going to Look After Work" Day!

So, people in pressure jobs can go ahead and wear a sweat-stained,
wrinkled shirt to work. Food workers can come in with grease smeared on
their chests. ER workers can on the blood before getting on the
bus. DMV workers can go ahead and practice that frown as they brush
their teeth for work. Me, I'd have some fun with it. I should just go in
with a martini in my hand and a maniacal look on my face. My shoes will
be untied and my fly will be open. All of these are ways that I have
ended my work day. And, on each occasion, I bothered to come in feeling
pretty slick and cool and ready for the day.

In fact, now that I think about it, I'll just wear paint-splattered
clothes to the office because, figuratively, that's probably much closer
to what I look like at the end of the day than anything else.

Satan in the Fast Lane

2007-10-12T00:23:00.001-07:00

Today, I celebrate (oof, argh, yikes) that I saw Satan. On the freeway.

My daily commute to the fact'ry involves, part of the way, crossing a floating bridge that stretches across a sparkly lake, and burrows into bumpy evergreen hills. It is usually a heavenly spectacle; however, it could, in some ways, be hellish, depending upon whether I managed to leave the house at 7 am or at 7:30. The difference between blessed and ungodly, in terms of that commute, is only a matter of those 30 minutes. On this day, I'd left on the early side of the morning and with a levititious cup of 7-11 coffee in my hand (the subject of an upcoming blog, the coffee will be), I was enjoying an uneventful and appreciatively rapid cruise.

When all of a SUDDEN ...

... on my left, a car passed. I glanced at it and, as is my habit, I took a look at the license plate. Oh my. Clearly spelled, without any attempt at clever character-play ("I 8 U" or "Q T"), the plate boldly read ...

"SATAN".

At first, I figured that the 7-11 coffee, with the herbal additives, had accomplished its hallucinatory goal. But, a few hard blinks of my crusty eyes later, the plate still read "SATAN". So, shit-fire, I guess it was real.

I could only laugh, for three reasons:

1) Only in this mossy corner of the Pacific Northwest could you get away with this. Our permissive, liberal culture says of weirdos "Oh, let them be. They are only EXPRESSING themselves. Though their expression hurts me, my repression of their expression hurts EVERYONE. So, I'll just turn a blushing cheek and have some more coffee, and be snitty behind their backs." In contrast, if you were to drive just up the block in the Deep South with "SATAN" on your license plate, you may make it back home with only a couple of bullet wounds, if you drive quickly.

2) How did they ever get the "SATAN" thing past the Department of Motor Vehicles? I thought there was a line on what you could put on a license plate. Does this mean that my dream of putting "VODKA" on my license plate could actually come true? Surely, even the die-est in the heart-est of conservatives would admit that they enjoy a little vodka at night before they would say that they enjoy a nice glass of SATAN at night (the truth, however, may be different)!

3) From the observation that I made as I caught up to the car and glanced at the driver, Satan apparently is an African-American woman, around age 40, who drives a black BMW 325i, and so, thereby, is a fine representative of a diverse upper middle class. I'd expect Satan to more resemble Dick Cheney driving a black Hummer. I could only shrug in approval.

And, so, there was the day's celebration, come early.

Andrew Jackson and the Special Purpose

2007-10-11T00:37:00.000-07:00

So, I reclined for a month or so to find out why I really exist, is how tha story goes. Guess what? I fount out.

I'm here to do exactly what the dang title of my dang blog says I'm here to do: Levitate! Celebrate something every day, that is (black gowld, Texas Tea)..

Because, hell, as Joy Roberts used to tell me back in 4th grade: "Jeremiah, you PLAY too much!"

So, okay, maybe 34 years later, I can admit that she was right.

I celebrated this epiphany with a bottle of cheap wine cooler, after a kick-butt session at the gym, thereby probably ruining all the reps on the bicycle that I did so determinately as I read that Andrew Jackson, in his life, had been shot in the chest, where a bullet remained for life; shot in the arm, which shattered his bones; had been shot by smallpox and, somehow, survived, in spite of the ignorant medical treatments of the time (bedrest, warm wet towels, and, probably, a good bleeding every day). Finally, as prez, he had been the almost-victim of an assassination attempt by a crazy who had two guns, which both misfired--the odds being 1 in 125,000 that such a thing would happen. I had another shot in his honor, this one, though, only FIGURATIVELY from a gun.

Andrew Jackson. The American Rasputin. Reason to celebrate!

Dream Lover

2007-08-12T11:20:00.000-07:00

I had this dream about a demure British girl who prepared a wonderful meal of tea and crumpets for me and she spoke to me softly and smiled when I spoke and I fell right in love with her and remained in love with her even after I awoke. Beyond the moral issue of being in love with a woman who's not my wife, is the psychotic issue of being in love with a woman who, as far as I know, exists only in my head. (Okay, that's TWO sentences. Maybe I'm "developing". And, by the way, my wife knows about the dream girl, and she approves!)

One Hundred Years from Today...

2007-08-09T08:47:00.000-07:00

Courtesy of the Tombstone Generator , I get to see something that, let's face it, I'm probably not going to get a chance to view, unless I get in some trouble with the mob and they march me to a "prepared" resting spot.

Just Give it to Me Straight, Doc

2007-08-08T09:49:00.000-07:00

So, I did the "procedure" and my diagnosis, with the heading, "Good News!" read, "I only found a polyp, which I removed, some internal hemorroids, and evidence of a past ulcer in your small intestine", which, of course, made me wonder what the hell the BAD news was....

...(there was none!).

The Human Fire Hydrant

2007-08-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I go in for a colonoscopy AND an esophagogastroduodenoscopy (I'm going to make my doctor pronounce that, and if he can't, I'm fleeing the procedure--being able to pronounce what you medically do to me is one of my unwavering requirements) which means, among other things, in order to prepare, I had to drink the phospho-soda to clear out my guts and, four hours into the "cleansing", I now have personal, graphic, confirmation that 60% of my body is most definitely water, or, at least, there USED to be 60% worth of water inside me.

Sunset

2007-08-05T23:30:00.000-07:00

The sunset made the clouds look like burnt orange staircases leading up to the moon.

Ghost Mirror

2007-08-04T07:18:00.000-07:00

We're temporarily without a driver's side sideview mirror, and in driving around without it yesterday, I found myself looking at the spot where it used to be as I attempted to change lanes and I, of course, couldn't see behind myself, but I still almost changed lanes, as if through the power of will, the way was made clear.

Sentenced to a Sentence

2007-08-03T07:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, so here is how I plan to become a bettah bloggah. I got this idea--okay, COMPLETELY STOLE--this idea from a site called onesentence.org. All the entries on this site are simply ONE sentence long. All the contributors need to do, is to tell their stories "briefly. Insignificant stories, everyday stories, or turning-point-in-your-life stories, boiled down to their bare essentials."

I have tried this and it is a remarkable way to focus your thinking. If you can distill your day, your thoughts, your fleeting fantasies and your harsh realities into one sentence, then you've actually come a long way toward training yourself as a writer to only say the essential thing that your mind is trying to form, to only create a diamond from the coal of experience (wince). Of course, with this discipline mastered, you can then move on to two sentences, five sentences, a page, a story, all rendered in intense, probing sentences that could actually hurt (so good) to read in succession.

Not to say I'll come anywhere near delivering that sort of visceral experience, but I will write a sentence a day to, at least, keep myself in practice. Now, what the onesentence.org site doesn’t explore is the sentence itself. A sentence need only have a subject and a verb, like "Work sucks.", and, actually, it can just be a minor sentence, like "Hey!" or it can be some labyrinth of stream of consciousness thought process a la Virginia Woolf. Or, it can be some James Joyce-ian pastiche of literary, societal, and mythical reference that only makes sense to a handful of people. Whatever. Depending on my mood, my sentence may be any of those, or may be some style I completely make up (or STEAL).

So, yeah. A sentence a day is all I'm putting myself on the hook for. This ought to get me blogging more, so that I can again annoy you on a daily basis. All I will assure is that the sentence will be real, in that, it will actually apply to some experience I had during that day. And, it may be some cop-out like "Dude!" (I promise I won't do that too often) to today's initial (reach of a) sentence:

"My cat jumped from my second story window and landed in the clump of Jacob's Ladder flowers and not against the corner of the window boxes jutting from the first floor windows, thereby sparing her life and, when we retrieved her, we figured she'd go nowhere near that window again, however, the first thing she did when she came back in was to rush to the exact spot she had fallen from."

Condolences

2007-08-02T09:16:00.000-07:00

I was going to reveal my "post-a-day" strategy today, but, my heart is keeping me from it. I instead have to send whatever good will I have the spiritual ability to send out to the people in Minneapolis. I live in a city of bridges, a lot of them stretching over beautiful expanses, and I shudder at the horror the victims must have experienced as they were participating in a routine, and possibly calming, commute. Yet more proof that hell has the keys to everyone's life. I'm extremely affected by what happened and I hope the best for the survivors, and, at some point, some measure of peace for those who didn't survive, and their families.

I'll resume normal operations tomorrow...

Ode to the Dark Side

2007-08-01T06:35:00.000-07:00

Over the sporatic course of my blogging (by the way, I've come up with a great way to assure that I blog everyday--details tomorrow!) I often get caught in the trap of thinking that, to remain aloft, afloat, sidereal, frivolous, and irrelevant means to always present an air of cheeriness. But every now and then, in real life, when I glance at my face in the rear view mirror, I ain't smiling so big.

No worries, I tell myself, as I suddenly spot a freeway sign that reads: "Caution: Weaving traffic ahead" (So, does this sign mean that we are no longer denouncing drunk driving but, instead, are now just endorsing a practice of careful tolerance? Will we start seeing signs at airplane entrances that say "Caution: Pilot has not been subjected to a test of blood alcohol content"?) And, so, the smile returns to my eyes.

However, this doesn't absolve me from needing to acknowledge that, really, in order to stay celestial, I need to jettison the negative load every now and then. And, the way to do that, for me, is to go kick a cat. KIDDING!! See, that already felt better. No, what I need to do is kick the FIGURATIVE cat, that is, just give a wink to my dark side, write it a little serenade, and inveigle it to come out and see the light of day. Well, when ole DS complies, and comes out, it meets with the killing sunlight and that dark weight squeals pitifully in the revealing light of day and burns off like a lit fart, thereby lightening my load. I then use the gaseous remains of its flaming demise to provide lift for my umbrella.

I do this regularly, in my journal. It's often too incendiary to print (but, if you can wait until my posthumous biography, you can read them all!), but I'll cast out a few of my "Odes to the Dark Side" here in the blog, just so you too can feel my pain! Or, smell the lit fart! Ewww!

Here goes, unedited:

"I left the door open last night and so the trash got in. It came right up to the bed and got in with me. At first, I didn't notice, but the unmistakeable odors of eggshells still slimy from the yolk and orange peels reeking the spice of decaying citric acid and milk gone to seed all wrapped me and squeezed me awake. I turned and, with my nose in a bunch, I embraced the trash and pulled it close. A bit of old meat found my lips and I parted mine and wiped the bitter meat with a gentle swipe of the tip of my tongue. It was unresponsive, yet alive with putrification. I pulled the trash closer until I couldn't tell where trash ended, and I began. I like it when we love this way, trash and I."

The Egg White and I

2007-07-25T13:01:00.000-07:00

I'm becoming a big fan of egg whites. They are practically no-fat, have just small bits of calories and they can taste great. I say "can" because, if you get lazy with cooking or buying them, then they just taste like wet paper. You have to first of all, crack them yourself, or witness them being cracked because I once fell for the egg whites in a carton products and, to the last brand on the shelf (even the ones that are stained yellow so that they look like whole eggs, which puzzles me why I'd know I'm eating egg whites, but just want them to look like whole eggs--it's like knowing I'm eating a carrot, but I want it to look like a carrot cake), they taste just slightly better than I'm guessing the carton housing them would taste.

Then, you have to cook them right. That means, for me, don't just scramble them like whole eggs because that doesn't work for them. No matter how much salt and garlic you put in them, their blandness wins out. No, you have to FRY them. You spread just a light bit of butter on the pan to prevent sticking, then you crack the egg...

...speaking of which, it took a while for me to figure out how to sucessfully separate the slimy egg white from the yolk. I tried cracking the thing into a bowl and then spooning out the yolk. The stuff's to slippery to do that without getting frustrated enough to bite a hole in myself. Then, I tried straining it, but, then, I was just making a bigger mess, sliming up another dish or utensil.

Then, after a short conversation with a cafeteria cook about my egg white woes, I got enlightened. She told me that she just cracked the egg open, but left the whole yolk and white part inside one half of the egg. Then, she would stand over the cooking surface take the broken edge of the recieving egg and place it under the yolk in the other egg and then TRANSFER just the yolk from one half egg to the other. The broken edge "cuts" the white as it flows, and it just dribbles out of the egg and into the pan. You have to do this a couple of times but, very quickly, you just end up with a yolk in the egg and white in the pan. Wow! That was exciting news, indeed. I still remember the look on her face as she described the process--she had a gaze that was somewhere between proud mama and wise sage. And, judging by how enlightened I felt, I probably had a look like I'd just heard Denise Richards call me "honey buns".

Anyway, once they're in the pan, leave them alone. Let them brown a little on the bottom and then flip them over like an omelet, let them brown a bit on that side and then slap them on a plate, salt them down, and go to town. Browning them gives them some sort of taste, a kind of crunchy, grilly kind of taste. Then, you salt them, and eat them. Yum-ay!

I like to complement my healthy breakfast with a light little side dish, like, roughly five or six slices of bacon...

Kick Me

2007-07-18T13:43:00.001-07:00

I've been taking these incredibly long, stupid breaks, haven't I? Sometimes, sitting down at a blog is like pulling up my chair all the way INTO the fireplace. I constantly think of all my readers, and even communicate with some off the blog-line (I have a messenger account). I feel like I've let some folks down from their levitations. I've thought of recording myself speaking into the mike and slapping that on the blog, but that's sort of cheating, isn't it? I've done it before, but it's not something to make a habit of. If I wanted to do that, I'd just do a podcast (which is still possible). I kind of want to stick to keeping it a writing medium. But, I don't know, I don't always have something clever and wacky to say, nor do I always have the magic cluster of words that brangs forth unto you an "image." I'm just this cartoony guy.

Speaking of which, do you see my new profile picture? I did it on simpsonsmovie.com. There's a link there where you can make your own Simpson's avatar. You can, in effect, "Simpsonize" yourself. My avatar comes frighteningly close to looking like me. I actually am a little creeped out by it, which means, it's gotta stay.

Hey, why don't all of you do that? All of you left to come read my blog, that is. I'd love to see what you all think you look like after you've been run through the Simpson-ator.

Try it out. And post it. And, while you're at it, tell me what you want me to write about. Kid stories? What's in my closet? What's stuck in my teeth today? Give me a swift kick to the buttular region, will ya!

Fiddle-aholics Unite

2007-06-28T00:40:00.000-07:00

Hello. My name is Jeremiah. I am a fiddle-aholic. No, I don't have a tabloid-ious relationship with the countrified violin-ic instrument. No. I'm a fiddle-aholic because I love to fiddle with things. You see, I cannot imagine, ponder, intellectualize, or cipher properly unless my hands are occupied with fiddling up something.

This is a "problem" I've had since I was 8. I used to love rubber bands. Not to shoot at The Mighty Poop Butt, aka, my little brother, but rather just to shake as I walked around. I would shake rubber bands like they had a thousand volts going through them. I'd walk around, sometimes talking to myself and all the time living in my head, and I'd be shaking that rubber band, whacking it up against walls and furniture, like it was a snake's forked tongue, flickering, taste-smelling its surroundings. My dad thought I was probably going to need medicine.

And, it couldn't just be any old rubber band. It had to have that "swing". To determine if a band had that swing, I'd give it a few test shakes to test its whippiness. Then, I'd weigh it in my palm to test the gravity of its imaginative powers. Then, I'd rub its width betwixt muh thumb and forefinger, to test its potential strength and durability.

If it failed ANY of these rigorous tests, then back in the drawer, back on the ground, back around whatever it was intended to bind, it would go. I would only fiddle with the best rubber bands. In case you're wondering, the best ones were green, just large enough to hang slightly loosely around my wrist, were firm like a tendon, and were of medium thickness. Yeah.

Nowadays, I have various fiddle-oids (as I call them). I've got those Chinese ding-a-ling balls, pens, marbles, hematite stones, mechanical pencils, my nose, my headphone chord, my hair, my glass yin-yang necklace, a closed book--heck, I find new stuff all the time.

My favorite, though, is my mini-slinky (see photos below). I constantly whip, whirl, bounce, and fondle that thing. I roll its thin, cool springs across my lips. I stick my fingers in its coils and then I spin it. I extend it and retract it dozens of times in a row. I hang it out of the car window. I swing it as I walk. I basically work that thing until, one day, I extend it exuberantly, and, with a sickening twang, it doubles back on its own spiral and, in that instant, it goes from an elegant, tight, and perfect spring, to a jangled jungle of twisted metal that now resembles a bowl of silver-plated vermicelli. The sight never fails to twiggle my belly-bone in horror.

So, then, on the way home from work, I have to stop at the math store to get a new mini-slinky. The math store is this place that sells math-oriented toys and games, which, is apparently the genre of slinkies. The lady who works there knows me now. She grins knowingly when she sees me walk in.

"You sprung another one?" she said the last time.

I shrugged and smiled back.

"Well, it's cheaper than therapy," she said.

Which, I suppose gets right to the heart of the matter.

I'm Jeremiah. I'm a fiddle-aholic. And, consequently, I can keep my head together. Daily.

My mini-slinky.

My mini-slinky slinkin'

Crushed Spirit

2007-06-25T23:27:00.000-07:00

So, Mona put forth the Friday word as "crush" and I'm just getting around to writing about it. Okay, fine, I'm not writing about it, but actually pulling some pre-written writings from my journal (like dry gum from underneath my third grade desk). I did this because when I saw the word, I was reminded of my "oh, pity me" writings that I stick in the corners of my notebooks. Those writings always start out lamenting my crushed spirit, and they end up cracking me up because they are so maudlin because, as of this moment, knock upon my wooden head, I am far short of tragedy and these writings more represent a person looking for the origin of pity than they represent someone "in trouble." In perspective, my despair runs much deeper than words--some fundamental things are going to have to change to make me bust out the ballet slippers, but, as it stands, I've got a fairly happy life and, my pants from seven years ago STILL FIT! So, hey, after roughly 3,000 pieces of bacon (I ain't kidding), I'm still not adding new cracks to the sidewalk. Good! Bring on more bacon!

So, in honor of being crushed, I offer two bits of lamentation that went awry:

Coat of Bricks

I wore this coat of bricks, for days and years, sunset to sunset. Bricks is itchy, bricks scratch your skin, and bricks bite like tiny alligators with brick teeth. When I walked in my coat of bricks, I made an awful noise, like crunching and chunking and I had to cover my own ears so that I couldn't hear myself bricking around. I smelled the rocky dust of bricks all the time. When I smiled, which was rare, my teeth were red with brick dust and my tongue was sprinkled with the stuff. I chewed and swallowed the deserved grit.

I rested often, but you see, you don't really rest when you are covered with bricks. You don't really rest. It gets heavy to rest, and it hurts. So, after a while, I'd get up and start bricking my way around again. The only time I slept was when I passed out from fatigue and pain. When I passed out, I dreamed of floating. Actually, even when awake, I dreamed of floating. Floating free of bricks.

Some Nature

Crush the flowers and smell between your fingers. Smear yourself with nature's perfume, but be careful, because as the fragrance rises, so may the hives on your skin! Ha! Don't get too poetic in the woods. Don't sit and ponder until you check around your pondering space to make sure that there aren't marauding mandibles ready to rip into your skin! And, ah, the crinkling sound of the rushing stream. Go there and admire it, but know that swarms of mosquitoes are primed to painfully rob you of your blood, one drop at a time! Or, if the waters are inviting, you way want to wade in, but be all aware of sneaky currents and hypothermia, because, if this is a mountain stream, then that's possibly freshly melted snow, colder than hate! Ahhhh! Or, is it AAAAAAAH!

The Subway Revelation

2007-06-19T09:18:00.000-07:00

So, my youngest and I went to Subway the other day, only because he asked VERY nicely. I don't like Subway and will only eat there if it's the closest place between me and passing out from hunger. To retool a Simpson's quote from a starving kid: "I'm so hungry, I could eat at SUBWAY!" I think of their menu like I think of their wearisome spokesperson Jared--they have all the appeal of wet socks (I'm glad you lost all the weight, Jared, but it looks like you need to fatten up on charisma there).

Anyway, we go in, and as I'm looking at the wretched menu, my son goes up to the prep lady and says "On a six-inch wheat bun, I'll take four slices of pepperoni, four slices of salami, sprinkled cheese, mayo, two slices of bacon, lettuce, and vinegar. Please."

I looked at him aghast, then I looked back at the menu.

"What's THAT? That's not on the menu!" I said.

He shrugged and gave me the "oh you silly old ancient dude" look.

"It's my own creation," he said. "You like it?"

I frowned and looked at him. "You can DO that? You can just order what you want here?"

He shrugged again and gave me the "ok, now you're scaring me" look.

"Of course!" he said.

I looked at the prep lady. "Of course," her look said.

I suppose that's a DUH! on my part because all the ingredients of a potentially good sandwich are all spread out before you. But, see, I've lived my life as a well-trained patron of fast food establishments. I grew up, sheltered lad that I was, being whooped into thinking that the menu is LAW at fast food joints.

You don't just sashay into McDonalds', all independent thinking and all, and say something like "Okay, I'll take a Big Mac, but I want four patties, and could you leave off the special sauce and instead put tartar sauce in there? And, a strip of bacon too, please." You'd get anything ranging from a catatonic stare to a "Boy, you ain't at home! You bettah snap out of it!" look.

Sure, Burger King did the "Have it Your Way" campaign which wasn't exactly an invitation to really customize your burger beyond requesting what NOT to put on it from the list of regular ingredients. So, it was more like a "Have it Your Way As Long As Your Way Doesn't Take Us Out of OUR Way" campaign.

Otherwise, I've been dutifully ordering from the menu at the fast food places, feeling all safe and yet subliminally oppressed and untrusted with my own desires. My soul was being dragged over hot glass shards, and I didn't even know it.

Then, along comes The Subway Revelation--You don't need to be shackled to Subway's challenged menu! Go ahead, order that bacon and pepperoncini and jalapeno sandwich, on half wheat, half garlic, slathered with mayo mixed with seafood, but just the pink krab bits! Yeah!

As my son happily munched his sandwich (which, by the way, was great), I embraced a new, fresh opinion of Subway and I walked from its gleaming doors, my face a-smile with that "I learnt something up today" look.

However, I still have a problem with Jared. Maybe I can request that he do a commercial where, in the middle of some bland blah blah, he has a sudden relapse and he starts building this Dagwood Bumstead sandwich and then holds it up to the camera, meat falling off of it like autumn leaves, and laughs maniacally and shoves it in his mouth as he runs from the director. "Revelation!" he screams, over olives jetting from his mouth. "REEVVVVVVVA-LATION!"

Jeremiahisms, Part 1

2007-06-14T05:58:00.000-07:00

Though I've posted audio entries before, I don't think that any of you have ever actually spoken to me (though, the Turtle Guy has messaged me, which, in this modren world, is actually pretty close to the same thing as real conversation, including the lack of punctuation marks). I say "I don't think" because, it's possible that I've run into Meno or Maggie or even Emma during my retail employee days on a popular street in a popular store in the Emerald City. I know for a fact that one of Maggie's favorite bookstores was right around the corner from where I worked, and that store's owner visited my work often, and I visited her store even oftener. So, I bet I passed you Maggie, underneath those bubbles.

Anyway, since I've probably not spoken to you, you likely don't know that I have several dozen "Jeremiahisms" that I spout, that are not necessarily original, but they do pepper my conversation and distinguish me a bit. I thought I'd share a few with you, since you don't get to hear them live. Who knows? One day you'll be on a bus talking to this weirdo and he'll say one of these things and you'll suddenly exclaim: "Jeremiah! Why, YOU'RE Jeremiah! Wow. I always imagined you to be taller. And with more teeth..."

What I say: "Cah, ya know…"
What it means: A slurred version of "Because, you know…"
Where I got it from: Bob Marley said it in an interview.
Why it stuck: It's beautifully redolent of the loose lifestyle and leisurely sounds of the Caribbean.
Used in conversation: "I won't be moving soon, cah, ya know, I'm pretty comfortable right here with my wine."

What I say: "Yes, I!"
What it means: "You better believe it!" or "I whole-heartedly agree!"
Where I got it from: Jamaican slang--usually Rastafarian
Why it stuck: Great, exuberant way to relay my satisfaction that something really hits me personally.
Used in conversation: You say: "Hey, Jeremiah. You look pretty relaxed there." I say: "Yes, I!"

What I say: "You can smell it all over Manhattan."
What it means: "This situation/odor/attitude/idea stinks."
Where I got it from: The Rolling Stones tune "Shattered."
Why it stuck: Very well describes how bad something stinks, either odorously, or onerously.
Used in conversation: "That was a bad meeting. I could smell it all over Manhattan."

What I say: "Well, as they say in [fill in the blank with a random locale], [fill in the blank with a mundane saying]. For example, "Well, as they say in Las Vegas, 'See you later!'" or "As they say in Philadelphia, 'Let's go.'"
What it means: It's a play on people who like to quote local wisdom to seem, I don't know, homespun or worldly, or whatever.
Where I got it from: I think I made it up...the parody part of it, I mean.
Why it stuck: It makes me laugh to mistakenly assign a popular saying to a particular locale where it likely didn't come from and is likely not particular to. And, it puzzles people. They either look at me like I have my facts seriously mixed up, or they look at me like they're actually wondering if the phrase "See you later" really once was particular to Las Vegas.
Used in conversation: Well, I think you get the point. So, like they say in South Dakota, "I'll drop the subject."

What I say: "Pretty decent, I must say!"
What it means: It's my stock response to "How are you doing today?" whenever a cashier or clerk asks me.
Where I got it from: Martin Short's Ed Grimley character, who used to say this when he was asked how he was doing.
Why it stuck: When said in a jolly tone, with a goofy waggle of the head (just like Ed Grimley used to do), it's funny, and it is the last thing people expect to come out of me. Also, it breaks the monotony of saying "I'm okay, and you?"
Used in conversation: As described above. Sometimes, I add an extra "I must say!" for effect, I must say.

Daddy Funny

2007-06-11T09:09:00.000-07:00

It's always fun when I unintentionally crack my 9 year-old son up, at least when whatever I did to crack him up didn't involve me needing medical attention afterwards ("Daddy! Step on that rake again! That was sooo funny!")

No, this time, we were in the mall Macy's, looking for a restroom. Now, I'm not usually ever in Macy's unless either going through it is the shortest route to the parking lot, or I have a bathroom emergency and every other mall restroom is way over in outer sectors and the next shuttle isn't coming for six minutes.

I have a hard time with Macy's or any other giant, pricey department store. I always go into a sneezing fit when I go into those places because, somehow, I always manage to enter the perfume section first. The subsequent Clash de Parfum is like a cross fire of tiny flaming arrows and they all manage to lodge themselves in my tender nostril walls, thereby, they almost immediately throw me into paroxyms of sneezing that make me lurch through the store like a spooked chicken, thrust forward by the momentum of my ah-choos.

It happened again on this day with my son, but we both had to go bad, so we pushed on. I saw a sign that said Restroom and we followed its lead. We went down a hall, turned left, went down another hall, turned right, went down ANOTHER hall...by this time, I was thinking I may have to start thinking of running...and we went down YET ANOTHER hall where, just as I was about to break into a sprint, there was the Men's room door, finally.

When I got there, my son right behind me, I shoved open the door and exclaimed "Man, finding this bathroom was like going on the journey for the Holy Grail!"

Okay, mildly amusing line, at best, I thought, and definitely not something I'd expect a 9 year-old to get--I was generally just entertaining myself out loud. However, my son erupted in laughter on the spot.

"HOLY GRAIL! That's funny, Daddy! Holy Grail!" and he literally bent over laughing. "Oh my God! What made you say THAT!"

Frankly, I was puzzled how he got that, but I laughed along with him, mostly because he was so genuinely gleed out.

We left the bathroom, and he was still laughing. We walked to the car and he kept sporatically cracking up and saying "Holy Grail!"

Finally, we got in the car and he wiped his tears and, still giggling, he said "Daddy, what's a 'grail'?"

Now it was my turn to laugh. Turns out he had no idea what I was referring to. He just liked the sound of the words "holy grail". And, when I thought about it, "grail" actually is a funny word.

But, I wasn't done being clever yet, apparently. I told him, "Well, a grail is like a chalice, a, um bowl..."

"A bowl?" he said, grinning again. "Like a toilet bowl? I get it!" And that set him off again. So, in essence I made a reference to something I didn't even know I was making a reference to, and yet managed to somehow be both accurate and funny. In other words, I pulled humor (or "kid humor") out of thin air.

So, we both laughed and then, at some point changed the subject.

Later that night, as I was putting him to bed, he giggled a little and said "Holy grail. Geesh!"

Hmm. A comedian for kids. Maybe that's my next career....

Goodbye, Catnip

2007-06-07T09:59:00.000-07:00

Someone killed Catnip, our one year-old cat, last week. Someone ran over her and kept running, even though I'm sure they knew they hit a cat and, not only that, hit a cat with a bright pink collar, a magenta bell around her neck, and a metallic red heart-shaped ID tag with her name and my name on it. But, we got no call. I shouldn't expect anyone to stand up and be held accountable. Hell, people hit humans on the street and keep going. There's a world full of humans who are out of touch with humanity.

It happened within a period of five minutes of her being alive and cavorting on our bird feeder in the back yard, to me spotting her in the street as I returned from a brief visit to a friend's house up the block. I'll bet it happened, literally, when I turned my back.

She wasn't crushed, but her face was no longer gentle. t wore a mask of a violent, sudden encounter. My kids and wife were still at my friend's house, so the first thing I did was call her and tell her the news. I think her reaction spread to the kids pretty quickly and they began wailing almost immediately.

I then rushed outside and put Catnip in a bag. I covered the top of it just as my youngest came running down the street. He was hysterical, and he begged to see his cat, but I told him that we were going to remember her the way she was and not look at her again. I knew full well that I had successfully protected them from the sight, but because I was the one who came upon her still bleeding body, I knew I was never going to remember her the way she was again. I hate that image of her in the street and I wish I could erase it.

Catnip was an unusual cat. See, I don't usually like cats. They slink around too much for me. They dart and they scratch. They carry an air of arrogance that hits me like a bad smell. However, Catnip wasn't like that. She followed us everywhere. She slept with the boys. She never darted or cowered under couches or away from company. She was as personable as a dog, frankly, and I grew attached to her. Two days before someone killed her, I told her, "Hey Kitty. You a cool kitty." (I talk to animals in a combination of baby-talk and ebonics. Ba-bonics.)

The next few days we spent consoling the boys. They cried frequently and we recounted many of Catnip's friskier moments. Then, we buried Catnip in the back, complete with makeshift tombstone, candlelit funeral, and a poem that a very soulful friend of mine turned me on to. When I read it in the sterility of my email box, I thought it to be a bit maudlin. But, as I stood over Catnip and read it, well, I "got something in my eye." Here it is:

DON'T WEEP FOR ME

Do not stand at my grave and weep;
I am not there.
I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow;
I am the diamond glints on snow;
I am the sunlight on ripened grain;
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush,
I am the swift uplifting rush of quietbirds in circled flight;
I am the soft star that shines at night.
Do not stand by my grave and cry;
I am not there,
I did not die.

- Anonymous

Goodbye, Catnip. See you everywhere.

Salvation

2007-05-24T00:21:00.000-07:00

"Cool, clear water," is how the song goes and I never tire of hearing it because whoever is singing it is probably strumming on a guitar, all by themselves, or blowing on a harmonica in not quite perfect tune, but the idea is that there is some longing for water, but is it really water? This is my conflict. I am not sure if the singer wants water, or just merely something as simple as salvation. You can get salvation in water, especially if you are dying of thirst, but salvation can come in the strangest ways.

At the thrift store, near the skis, of all things, there sat a nun’s habit. It was dusty, which is what made me immediately think that it was for sale, and not something that a nun had discarded, making her break from the cloister in grand, yet subdued fashion, tossing her habit into the skis, genuflecting for the last time, and walking quickly out of the store, head down, hands folded. I imagined, since I was already on a roll of imagination, that she then went straight for a local tavern, where no one would know her, or stumble upon her, and probably would not ask anything about her long black dress.

I picked up the habit and turned it in my hands, looking for a price. There wasn’t one. I slapped off some of the dust and held it to the light. I was surprised to see some strands of hair hanging from the band. I looked closer at the hair. It looked red, or burgundy, then, in another angle, light brown. Was she young, I suddenly asked myself?

I looked up to survey the area. Only an old woman was nearby, fondling a rusted ice pick.

"Salvation," my head said. I still can't figure out why it said that.

The Lame--I Mean--GREAT-est Story Ever Told

2007-05-23T00:47:00.000-07:00

Ooooh-kay.

The big story in my humble town, in some circles, goes a little something like this:

A guy. A middle-aged, married, healthy, frisky-looking Northwest type, went jogging one Friday evening. He drove his car to a wooded spot and set upon the trails therein. At some point, he disappeared. A great big search ensued, taking the time of over 200 people, and a few dogs. Frowny news people reported, at the top of the hour, about everyone's diligence in trying to find this man. Despite all that, he was not found, and the search got called off. The worst got feared.

But, happy ending! Three days later, he wanders into his house at 11pm, to an understandably shocked wife. He had no scratches, no health issues, and, depending upon who you ask, no explanation as to why he went missing. Not that he didn't proffer an explanation: according to him, he did actually go jogging, but then fell off a ravine, got a knock on the head, and, for the next three days, drifted in and out of consciousness and, while drifting, remained fairly immobile.

However, he finally drifted back in long enough to make his way home and, now, it looks like an official miracle that he's alive.

Ooooh-kay.

Off the bat, let me make it clear, as our local police have done, that I will not officially dispute his story (I'll raise a bushy brow, all Mr. Spock-like, maybe, but not officially dispute). We have no idea what really happened to him. There are stories of college that I still tell that, if you buy me enough drinks (or give me a blog) I'll admit that I'm not so sure it actually happened the way I told it, though "that wedding party" and "the bride who invited me back to the hot tub" did, at some point, really occur on the same night. However, I can't say for sure that the very clothes-optional, clandestine, rum-heavy evening where I had to escape via the woods really happened exactly THAT evening.

But, what I WILL say is that, from the subsequent online reader comments tacked onto that jogger story, people have had varying "interpretations" of what may actually have happened on his evening (or three), and they range from "yeah, that could happen" to "hey, the guy may have mental problems" to "maybe he was abducted by aliens" to "okay, that was the lamest way to conceal an affair that I ever heard." It all proved to me that perspective, compassion (however misplaced), mixed with a little subjectivity (including some latent guilt about having told your own big giant lie way back whenever) figures prominently in how we judge other people. One person's mental problem is another person's lame excuse, which is, in turn, another person's miracle. Unless we live the life, we can't draw the conclusion, but based upon our own prejudices, crimes, morals, or lascivious desires, we'll go ahead and draw a conclusion anyway, since, hell, we got a few minutes.

Old, tired philosophy, I know, but, wow, how poignant it still is when we are faced with a fact and still can't find consensus on it. Some people will even purposely go against the grain just to wreck the fact. Why is OJ free? Why did Blake get to the American Idol final? Why do I buy gas at the cheapest station in town and still think I'm getting a deal?

All I know is that if I disappear for three days, and my alibi's a lie, I still better take a dive off a ravine just to make sure I earn the badge.

Keep Your Nose Clean

2007-05-22T00:35:00.000-07:00

My soul-buddies over at Married to the Sea (on my blogroll) give me dark, vulgar humor on a regular basis, but, my laugh-of-the-month belongs not to their usual trick of inappropriate captions to innocent drawings, but to their newfound flurry of insane videos.

If you've ever wondered what you should do with those dirty nostrils of yours, or just always wanted to see someone take action with their own nose, then you've got to see this.

All I can say is, please, married's, stay away from enemas. Let the Jackass folks take over from there. They're professionals.

Friday Reproduction

2007-05-19T08:28:00.000-07:00

Reproduction is the Friday word. I'm 'bouts to break it down thusly:

Re-
Release. Every day, at some point in my commute, I scream or say something completely random. ("Walla Walla!" or "Damn those oranges" or "Speak like muddle-bones, will ya!"). It is an outburst caused, I believe, by a condition somewhere between Tourette's and the spontaneous death of yet another brain cell.

-pro-
Professional. Everybody is one. Years ago, I went to see a concert by Gil Scott-Heron, he of "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" fame. ("The revolution will not give your mouth sex appeal. The revolution will not get rid of the nubs. The revolution will not make you look five pounds
thinner, because the revolution will not be televised, Brother."). At the show, he told us all that each of us is a natural born professional; each of us has an "-ology". He said that he was a "truth-ologist." He challenged us all to find our "-ology." What pro-fession are you? Blogologist maybe? I've decided that I'm an "imaginologist" myself. Not because I am some imaginative innovator, but because I spend an inordinate amount of time in the realm of imagination, speculation, and idealist-ication. I know the dreaming mind well.

-duct-
Tape. Duct tape. Does it all. You can wear it, repair with it, and strengthen with it. I thought I was jaded to its infinite uses. That was until muh Boy got a wart on his foot and the actual medical remedy was to put some sort of wart medicine on it and then wrap it in duct tape. That is, directly to the skin. I was thinking, what next, then bleed him for ten minutes every night, and sacrifice a chicken, in hope that we can rid him of the vapors? Well, we didn't have to do all that, but with the application of med and duct, his wart succumbed and I was enlightened. Oh mighty Duct, what wonders will you accomplish next?

-ion.
Ion. Ionosphere. The "four layers of the Earth’s upper atmosphere in which incoming ionizing radiation from space creates ions and free electrons that can reflect radio signals, enabling their transmission around the world." It's the ionosphere we get to thank for communication. Who would have figured that the very Earth itself encourages us to talk and listen to each other? It's not enough that it nourishes our survival, but it also facilitates our community. It even has made provisions for technology. Whoa. I'm sure the Earth also harbors the cure for every disease, the secret for peace, and, maybe even entwined, in the threads of some roots somewhere, the names of the winners of the next ten super bowls. Most amazing is how it facilitates our reproduction. Here's to future generations finally realizing just how much the Earth is on our side.

Thoughts in Progress

2007-05-03T05:56:00.000-07:00

Swirling your olives in the martini, two olives that is, releases the slightest spectre of olive essence into the liquor, giving it the exquisite elegance of a lightly spiced liqueur, vaguely Mediterranean in its personality and, I think, infuses the brain with the gift of "expressive, yet subtle, conviviality".

Cold spring Northwest rain is like a million tiny winters falling upon your skin, bits and pieces of a shattered season, pitifully trying to wrest your attention away from the sound of the bursting seeds just under your feet. In cahoots with the wind, often, those vengeful remnants of winter do actually make you bury yourself in your pockets, but, you just know that it is now temporary and that, within the month, the winter spirits will finally go to rest.

Some people I've talked to say that they are ashamed to go to a gym because they're so out of shape and that they'd embarrass themselves and I always respond by assuring them that, actually, there is probably no more equal a ground than the gym for them to stand on. While people even in church may look at you with scorn for being overweight, in a gym, everyone's equal. Though you can only bench press 70 pounds, you are as impressive as that guy who can bench press 225 pounds. Why? Because you're THERE. That's the mentality of most of the people I know who go to a gym. If you are in the gym, and you are lifting, riding, treadmilling, or pushing something, then you have about NO room for shame. It's hard to convince people of this, though. Thank you, magazine covers, Hollywood, and the fashion industry.

Lately, I've become insane. I have this music creation program that I completely love. It can produce an infinite number of sounds. But, do you know what I like to do? I like to create one or two sounds, and repeat them. I program an interesting "bloop" or "blink" sound in the synthesizer, and then I set it to loop for as long as I can take it, which is up to a half hour. Sometimes, I pull out my guitar and play two notes along with the bloop and the blink and I play them over and over again. And, I smile. And I groove, to what amounts to a sound much like water dripping from a faucet onto a trash can lid, or to the flap of a mailbox flopping and squeaking in the wind. I am actually entertaining myself. And, I'm even thinking of recording the whole pulsing cacophony. Lately, I have become insane.

Baseball Better Be Berry Berry Good to Me

2007-04-30T08:18:00.000-07:00

Remember that Peanuts cartoon where Charlie Brown is beginning to feel he's obsessed with baseball and, though he's trying to deny it, he gets the ultimate confirmation that he might be insane when, one morning, he awakes to the sun rising, only, it isn't the sun that finally bloops over the horizon, but, a giant baseball?

That's where I am, or rather, have been led.

The Littlest Jeremiah is a naturally talented young athlete and it seems that baseball is his greatest talent and interest. I've consequently done all I can to foster that and, as payback for buying the best bats, negotiating for him to get the best coaches, and being at every game, as scorekeeper, always just a glance away, he's actually become really good and really in love with the sport. We're now in the midst of the season, playing with an intense but superb, kid-oriented coach, on a great team and we've got baseball coming out of the yin, the yang, the nose, the ear, and stuck betwixt the toes. Three games a week plus practices. I don't get to sit down when I get off of work. Instead, I bounce off my house the moment I come home and I bounce all the way to the baseball field.

Vacation was a respite (though we tossed the baseball aplenty), but it was this way before then, and will be for a long time because, it seems little Jeremiah has been selected for the All-Star team. Now, add two All-Star practices a week, five weekend tournaments (two of them in distant towns, requiring weekend hotel stays) starting in late May with as many as three games a day, for three days, and, of course, on the rare off day, I'm still out on the field doing one-on-one pitching and hitting and groundering drills with him, and I get the feeling that maybe I should just clear a little space under the bleachers where I can sleep, and live on peanuts and seeds that fall through the slats. I'll sleep with my little team banner bunched up under my head, and not only will the sun be a baseball, but so will the moon, and probably the stars too.

Not that I'm complaining. Muh boy is a joy to watch. He's a great player, and he is so at home on the field that he looks like he grew there. He looks like a tiny pro in his uniform, hat cocked to the side, hands on his knees, his eyes checking out the bases. He kicks the dirt, cocks his hips, and slaps his glove just like the pros do. It's like he took classes on "How to Stylishly Idle In Baseball". He has a monster swing, he catches just about anything that comes near him, he pitched for the first time this weekend and left with two full, scoreless innings, which included catching two pop flies. He's a little star and he's gonna build daddy a big house one day.

So, sure, at random times during the day, I'll hear the words "Steeeeee-rike!" in my head. Sure, I'll start speaking exclusively in baseball metaphors ("Sure, I'll take a swing at that." "We've got deadline this week, and I'm behind now, but, when it comes down it, I bet I'll beat the throw to home!" "That last idea was a wild pitch, man."). And sure, I'll have nightmares where I'm being chased by a bunch of $200 dollar bats, all demanding that I buy them or else they'll knock me into the upper deck.

But, at the height of my insanity, when I look at the sunrise and it's actually not the son, but rather my SON, wearing his hat cocked to one side, grinning and winking, then I'll have also reached the height of my pride.

Plop!

2007-04-25T08:44:00.000-07:00

Hey.

Just got back, well, on Monday, from an extended Northwest Canadian getaway on the famous "Sunshine Coast" so-named, I think, because the shade of grey there is much lighter than the shade of gray a couple of hundred miles south of there down where I live.

Once I summit "email mountain" (you office folks know what I am referring to), I'll slap up a short photo and music (!) review of my trip.

Sorry for the absence. We were in a place with unreliable access to the things that make us modern and sick with convenience, like the webanet and the ability to talk on a cell phone without sounding like a bad edit.

Cutup

2007-04-04T13:38:00.001-07:00

I'm getting older, or knives are getting sharper. Knife sharpening technology has reached its zenith as my surehandedness has as slipped its zenith. I know this because we just got a new set of knives, like the Ginsu ones I used to see on TV. Except, Ginsu knives have edges like ball bearings compared to our new knives. Our new knives cut with a frightening efficiency and quickness. I can slice a carrot by just waving the knife edge about a centimeter above the carrot. I even think I hear the blade whistling as I move it. You think I'm kidding. I'm not. I may be exagerrating, but, I 'm NOT kidding.

It is all fine, though, for knives to commit cruelly precise acts of slicing upon carrots, but don't try washing the knives. And, don't be Jeremiah. I have hand-washed these knives a total of four times. My hands, as of today, have a total of FOUR new, clean, long, smiley faced-shaped slashes in them. Not a one of them even hurt. All I felt, as I was dutifully washing the blade, like I've hand-washed every single blade of every single knife I've washed in my 30 or so years of dishwashing, was the tell-tale "Slice of Uh-Oh", similar to how you feel when you get a paper cut, except, paper cuts kind of sting. The cut of the EvilSharpKnife is much more like a razor kiss.

I felt the slice, and, each time, I knew instantly what I did. And, each time, I reacted the same way. I winced, said a dirty word (twice, with feeling), and I looked at my finger, which, on first glance, looked just fine. Then, about two seconds later, blood rushed out of my skin like kids coming out of school when the final bell rings. I washed a few teaspoons of blood down the drain before I wrapped the finger and then band-aided it. And, of course, I picked up the blade to look at it, then to touch that evil edge, as if to make peace with it, and I shook my head, thinking, wow, if I had been washing this thing with any more vigor, or with any more martini in my system, I might now be thinking of new ways to type.

Hey, dummy!, you say, just stick them in the dishwasher! Yeah, tried that. Got a spanking from my wife. "Those are my best knives! Don't put them in the DISHWASHER!," she said, as if I had tried to put a toaster in the garbage disposal. We have this discussion a lot when I try to do stupid things like use the "wrong" washrag to wash my face ("Those are our DECORATIVE washrags! Don't wash with those!), or pour wine in the "wrong" wine glasses ("Those are my GOOD wine glasses! Don't drink out of those!").

So, anyway, here I sit, a cutup man. My wife suggested we just get rid of the knives, not because I've lost about a pint of perfectly good blood, but because the kids might get ahold of the knives, which would surely be a tragedy seeing that they've managed to end up in the emergency room only because of the unfortunate, strategic placing of silly putty, so a sharp knife might end up getting them taken from us.

I'll keep on washing them, but I'm going to try to be careful (this makes the fourth time I've told myself this). But, if those knives are actually out to get me, as I suspect they may be, then it is only a matter of time before I'll need to have a prosthetic middle finger. Which, actually, wouldn't be too bad, if I could get one about a foot long. Nose-picking and giving traffic "signals" would be much easier. When you get old like me, you'll take help in the form of anything.

Friday Woid: Melt

2007-03-30T00:10:00.000-07:00

The Friday word is "melt" and my mission is to stop the world and melt with it. Here is my contribution:

How to Melt

Hug everyone in your house and don't let them go.
Tell a friend how f**king cool you think they are.
Sit on a beach and just when you think you're hot enough, open another beer, and close your eyes, and take a deep, deep sip.
Listen to John Lennon singing "Woman" or Bob Marley singing "Redemption Song" or, for a particularly poignant melting, listen to Billy Holiday singing "Strange Fruit".
Pause Starship Troopers at the point where Denise Richards flies the big starship for the first time (OK, that may be only how I melt).
Read about what Rosa Parks did on that bus.
Count your blessings.
Pay for the drive-thru order of the car behind you at some fast food joint.
Eat some cheesecake.
Watch the stars for five minutes straight. Notice how the longer you look, the more stars appear.
Subject yourself to shape-altering heat, as can be found in Hawaiian lava pits, or within five feet of Denise Richards (!).
Don't freaking forget that you are alive and, at every moment, can suck up all this life stuff, this air, this weather, this bunch of other breathing people, and, of course, A Unique Perspective. Enjoy YOURself. We're all roughly 98.6 degrees, so, in effect, each one of us has the potential to be a sunny summer day.
Make grand, nearly embarrassing proclaimations (see above).

Commute-icate

2007-03-29T09:41:00.000-07:00

So, I've grumbled aplenty about having to crawl the freeways to get to my job on the bEast Side. It was, when I first got the over-lake position, a maddening commute, and I was regularly putting fresh teeth marks in my steering wheel and I realized that I know an awful lot of curse words. An awful lot.

But, Over Time, I've gotten used to it and, actually, have come to enjoy my time alone on the tar plains. I listen to SubGenius radio shows (Praise "Bob") and reggae and 80's music and my Spanish language lessons on my iPod and I sip coffee and, generally, have become like the masses that teem about me--I'm a commuter, and I'm resolved to it.

Then, one day, a somewhat sunny day, another epiphany: I actually have a beautiful commute! While a lot of America drags their SUV's and Hybrids across some pretty scraggly, boring, flat landscape past buildings that look like bad teeth, I get to spend my freeway hour cruising through some pretty pretty vistas.

So, I thought, I'd bring my camera on the next sunny day, and, as best as I could from my car, try to capture my commute, or at least the slow part of it. I realized, as the traffic began to flow again, that driving and taking photos is kind of deadly. Not to mention some of the stares you get when a fellow commute-icator realizes you're snapping photos. I get the frowning of a lifetime. Boy, if looks could shoot the bird...

Any way, hop in. Check out my commute (by the way, I'm NOT a photographer):

This is how things look when I first get on the freeway and cross the bridge. That lump back there is mighty Mount Ranier. Second largest mount in the contiguous US. Because of our clouds, we only see her a few dozen times a year. So, when you can see her, well, it's going to be a double-martini day (cloudy days are triple-martini days--you drink less on sunny days so you can see them clearly).

Then, a few feet later, through my front windshield, we have Downtown Great Northwest.

Then, just a little further back north, oh!, what's THAT landmark?! And, look at that glimps of just ONE of our beautiful lakes. Ahhhh. Sip, sip. Sing along with the Thompson Twins...

Here's another shot of the lake and Needle that I had to lean back for. I almost killed myself to get this one, so look at it longer!

Now we approach another bridge I HAVE to cross. This is yet another of our lakes. And, that bright light in the sky. What is it? Why has it come? What does it WANT from us?

And, finally, when I crest that bridge, here's what I see outta my passenger window. Yeah, dawg. The speed picks up from there and though there's still more view to see, I can't stop to see it, and if I did, then the photo would be of Jeremiah's vantange point from a ditch.

It's A Frightening Day in the Neighborhood

2007-03-27T01:36:00.000-07:00

As my dentist was grinding away at my teeth, whittling away years of enamel, I heard the dental assistant say over the whirring drill, "Hey, did you know that Mr. Rogers, before he hosted the children's show, was actually a sniper in the Vietnam War? Yeah. He apparently killed over a dozen people. And, you know why he wore those cardigans? That's because his arms were covered with tattoos. Really!"

I nearly believed it. I mean, first of all, the dark comic possibilities there are rich. Imagine Mr. Rogers, at his post, looking down the barrel, and seeing an enemy soldier drifting into his range. Mr. Rogers sprouts a grin, and settles his cheek upon the cool metal of his rifle. He winks one eye as he takes aim. "Hello, neighbor," he says, as he squeezes the trigger. "Welcome to my neighborhood."

But, alas, it is not to be, for I proclaimed, as soon as I could close my mouth again, some twenty minutes later, that I have moved that little factoid to number one on My List of Things To Google (replacing "Mary Ann" "Gilligan's Island" "whatever happened"). And, I found out that this was just yet another urban myth. In fact, Fred Rogers entered broadcasting as soon as he graduated college in 1951, at the age of 23, and practically never left the business for 50 years. The only time he wasn't broadcasting, he was learning to become an ordained minister.

So, though it would have been a spicy novelty to know that Mr. Rogers used to kill, it is quite untrue. In fact, he would have been too old to fight in Vietnam anyway, seeing that he was born in 1928.

Still, I welcome any such rumor that will place my heroes on a different plane, especially one that completely belies their persona. I think, by the way, that's why the Mr. Rogers as sniper legend was so tasty--it ran so incredibly contrary to the qualuudically-calm man a lot of us spent quite a few hours with, that it almost seemed believable that he harbored a dark side because, in the end, who the hell could really be so nice? On only a slightly less jagged portrayal, I remember Eddie Murphy parodying Mr. Rogers in his character Mr. Robinson, who was always dodging the landlord via the fire escape. Same principle. Mr. Rogers running from debt collectors was so outrageously against his proclivities that it was funny.

Looks like Mr. Rogers was the real thing, though. No kills. And, cardigans just for comfort.

Though, from my research, I seem to have uncovered that a distant relative of Mr. Rogers used to live in London, around the time of the Jack the Ripper killings, and that if you study the shots of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood at the beginning of the program, you'll see that it was modelled after the area that the young ladies were found, and if you look even closer, there is a red car parked at the spots where a body...

Wherein Jeremiah Thinks Too Much

2007-03-26T00:07:00.000-07:00

I just recently turned 42, which I suppose I should have broadcast, but didn't because it wasn't the happiest of occasions, though I did receive some lovely gifts, not the least of which being an iPod Shuffle, from my kids. The tiny silver miracle is a marvel considering many things, but being the music geek I am, it is especially marvel-ous because, just a few birthdays ago, I was loving on my portable CD player, thinking that was truly a sign that we had arrived at The Future. Now, we have the Shuffle, which, if you're not careful with it around your mouth, you could end up accidentally swallowing 250 songs.

No, the fact that I'm as hip as the next teenage My Space-r didn't make me goofily happy on that day. I, instead, even as I clutched my Shuffle, went into a Spiral of Contemplation that left me feeling existentially drunk and nearly as ridiculous as I would have felt had I danced naked at church. I mean, at this point, I should have figured it all out. I should be discussing stocks with the guys, building shelves and kitchens in my spare time, achieved a career that includes cell phone calls at home to solve emergency occurances and travel to Boston to "seal the deal." I should be able to choose between a variety of suits, wear some cologne, and know more about investing than I do about the contestants on The Apprentice. Yep. Seems I never grew up, and, as charming as that may seem on the surface, it kind of bothers me when the house gets quiet and the walls get really close.

It's the classic "what have I done?" thing, I know. It gets bigger, though, when you start rifling through your writing, which was supposed to be your ticket to the moon, and you see unfinished everythings everywhere. Scraps of thoughts, wisps of wanderings, and tatters of tales that gather and now look like a sewing room floor--multicolored strips of tangled ideas just as paisley as they are mottled, as they are ragged and frizzled. Pick up one, turn it in your hands, smell it, and throw it back down to get lost again in the Shuffle of color.

And, of course, none of it has gotten me to the moon. It has, ironically, only gotten me to a place where I can't breathe and I don't weigh much.

My kids are quite the legacy. My youngest son is a natural athlete, able to pick up a ball of any shape or size and get it into the hole, over the net or the fence, or right into the hands of another kid with a deftness that defies effort. My oldest can dip and swerve around words and concepts like he had two pair of wings. I'm proud that some vestige of my abilities survives fully in them. I want them, though, someday to think "But, yeah, my dad, now HE really knew how to [fill in the blank]!"

No point here. It's just that after 42 years of service to mankind, I'm disappointed that mankind may possibly have no knowledge of me.

American Blogger

2007-03-25T08:26:00.001-07:00

Randy:

Dawg, look, check it out. You are having a hard time. I can dig it, but, dawg, I mean. Look, dawg, you at the beginning of your blogging, I was, I mean, you were a little pitchy, but you got the groove dawg. Check it. You got this, I don't know, this thing dawg and you need to just let it go, see what I'm saying. Let. It. Go. Dawg. You alright. But, you know, you gotta be what you gotta be and, dawg, I mean, you ARE all that! That's right, dawg. So, yeah. Peace. Keep it up.

Paula:

Jeremiah, you are the most, I mean, look at you. You know yourself, you get up there, you shine, you, you, you, shine, and that's you, Jeremiah. You are you. There is no you like you, and if there was, that would mean that there was more you. You do your thing, and it's yours, and I love you. I love you. You stand up there making me love you, and you know what, you? It works. I am, I am, you are, this, I mean, everything. It's everything. It's all everything. It's all you, Jeremiah. You are YOU! And, that sweater. LOVE IT!

Simon:

Dreadful. You post with the frequency that a rat takes a bath. Your posts are some sort of sporatic cast outs that could more likely be called farts than posts. Sorry for having an opinion! But, really, you just need to practice. Write the check, or get out of the line. This is a blog. So, don't "be a log". "Blog!" Frankly, I think you're in the wrong business. You ever tried garbage collecting?

Ryan:

Wooh, Simon. Now that's some constructive criticism. Jeremiah, you get free advice from a master. I wish I could get Simon to give me such wonderful advice on my career.

Simon:

Oh yeah. Well, here you go. Put on a dress and hit the diva circuit. Be who you are.

Ryan:

Woo! You'd like that wouldn't you? Okay, Jeremiah, how do you feel right now?

Jeremiah:

(Whoops, Jeremiah is gone. He's on the freeway now, headed for his job, stuck in traffic, chewing on his dashboard, leaving handprints in his steering wheel, and wondering if maybe he should wait until lunch for his martini, or just go ahead and have one with his breakfast.)

From the Archives

2007-03-05T23:22:00.000-08:00

Here's a little bit of somewhat fiction that I wrote some time back, apparently just so I could have something to post in a pinch or just in hope that the Friday word would happen to be "lake".

MY MOTHER, THE LAKE

Lakes scare me. I don't know why. The bodies of water, sitting still, amidst the woods, nestled in the mountains, or spread across a prairie or stretched across tundra or snow-skinned fields, they all scare me, lonely sentries of the ocean, sitting and watching, reporting, waiting to once again be part of the mother, the ocean, and drown us all.

I relayed this fear to my aging mother, who I visit twice each week at the Grand Hills Assisted Living Facility, just past the hospital, on the edge of the woods and, ironically, only steps from the man-made Hopkins Lake, where water sat still and glassy, some of the perimeter staked with concrete viewing areas and railings. They took the seniors down there once a week. None were allowed to go on their own, but, according to my mother, the rowdier, more careless seniors did it all the time.

"That's scary," I said to her on one of my visits. We were in the commons area, a big room, full of deep redwood tables and light, padded cedar chairs. Windows surrounded us and the sun came in nearly unabated.

"That's a pretty lake," my mother said, "Prettier than this damn room that smells like Pine Sol all the damn time. Better to go out there and smell real pine, not some damn laboratory pine stink."

My mother sat straight up in her chair. A copy of Redbook lay upside down in front of her. I turned it rightside up and, in another moment, she turned it back upside down again.

"Somebody should be watching them, though," I said. "Wandering off to the lake. That's not good."

My mother bristled, her brow changing shape. "Nobody can tell me where I can go or not. I didn't make it to 109 years old just to be told what to do. I've forgotten more than some of these folks working here will ever learn. They ought to be asking me what, what all they need to do to run things." She pointed her finger, a stubby staff ruined and twisted by arthritis. "After 109 years of living, you got license to run things."

"You're not 109 years old," I said.

"Give or take a few dozen years. I feel 109 years old."

"You're 90," I said.

"By your figuring," she said.

I reached out to her. She just sat there, glassy-eyed, large upon the landscape, a child of the ocean of heaven herself. I realized then that she was just like a lake, a giant piece of an even bigger monolith. A representative of something huge. I stood at her shore and marvelled at her stillness, her expanse.

For a second, mom had allayed my fears, like she's done for 109 years, and she looked cooling and tranquil and, so, I dove into her, and gave her a kiss.

Hiding Out

2007-03-02T07:48:00.000-08:00

I see the Friday word is "hide" and that's appropriate, if not a little like somebody's trying to tell me something.

But, yeah, I'm hiding. I've got so much work to do and be responsible for and I'm trying to hide in my own hide, slipping around like a cat, visions of other people actually just a jungle overhead, in whose shadows I can creep. Someone says hello and I hide behind the air molecules, hoping they won't see me. Of course, they do, so I say words that relate to something about what I'm working on and I hide behind the sentences. They all seem to make sense, but I'll forget them as soon as the intruder leaves. What did I just say? Did it make sense? When they turned the corner, did they roll their eyes?

So, I go to my desk, look out of the window at the glass in the window facing me from across the atrium, and I see the outlines of people hunched and leaning at a meeting and I feel sorry for them because they can't hide in a meeting. I know. I've tried. But someone says, "we need an update" and I'm discovered, and I have to hide my shyness and speak something, without a waver in my voice, which itself had to come out of hiding, where it was trying to sleep amongst my daydreams.

And, of course, I hide right here. Right behind Jeremiah. He's a gracious lad, allowing me to occupy his space, use his face, move his fingers and reveal his thoughts. Our agreement is that if I promise to make him look interesting, fill him with breath and insight, then he'll continue to let me hide in him. If I should buck the contract, though, he'll step aside, and there I'll be.

"Pay no attention to the man behind the Jeremiah!" I'll scream. But, too late, there I'll be. In all my glory. Dr. Jeremiah, and Mr. Hide.

(Creak!)

2007-02-20T23:45:00.000-08:00

(Tip toe-ing noise. Tip-toeing noise.)

(Keep quiet in here! Someone might hear you! Look at this place. Dusty, full of cobwebs, echoing voices, tattered intentions and wispy grandeur.)

(SHHH! Don't knock over that post! Someone commented on it! They might be watching! Careful. )

(Just. Try. To. Get. To. The. Bar. Yeah. Right there.)

(Yes, he drank a plenty martinis. SHHH! Stop laughing.)

(What happened to him? Nothing, fool. He's still here. He's just, well, BUSY.)

(Well, I don't know what he's doing. Jeremiah never talks to me. He just, I don't know, nods and dips into the shadows. The shadows smell funny. I ain't going after him in there.)

(Yeah. Levitation. Yeah, right. You know what? I think he's doing just the opposite. Here. Here's a photo of what his life is really like…)

(See? Get it? He could USE some levitation about now. The kid's got problems. Now, get his gin and let's get out of here before someone comments! You don't want Mona on your butt.)

(Sure, he'll get right. Look at that helmet! How can anyone go wrong with that helmet?)

(What? Man, be QUIET! Now, what? A post? You want him to post? Then what, post again tomorrow, and then the next day? What is he, a machine? You want him to say something about that co-worker who found out that his iPod had 5,433 songs on it and subsequently said 'How do you know what to listen to?' I mean, what kind of question is that? Do you ask a person with an extensive book collection 'How do you know what to read?' Or, do you ask someone with 30 pairs of socks 'How do you know which pair to wear?' Or, maybe you want him to mention that he is so freaking busy that if he was any busier then he'd be a tropical storm?)

(Whatever. Let's get out of here. Dusty blogs are creepy.)

(And, yeah, sure, I'll admit it. If I ever became a transvestite, I'd name myself "Dusty Blogs". Now, come on, before the Ba-dozer gets here. You wanna whoopin'? Didn't think so…)

(SHHHHHH!!!)

Library Enemy No. 1

2007-02-08T09:17:00.000-08:00

As something of a trick question, I often ask people what they think the most important building in town is. The answers I get range from city hall, to the mall, to Starbucks, but rarely do I get the RIGHT answer, which is, the LIBRARY. To me, it's always the most beautiful, most prestigious, and most useful building in town. The vast collection of knowledge and inspiration there is akin to living inside the brains of a zillion people and, yes, is even more satisfying than the Web simply because I can put all that knowledge into my hands, creep off to a musty corner, hide myself in stacks of that knowledge, and do some serious, back-hunched, eye-squinted, paper-fume-inhaling reading.

In fact, I love the library so much that I try to stay out of it as much as possible. For two reasons. First, I no longer have the time to actually engage in the fantasy that I just spoke of a paragraph ago, so to go there makes me nostalgic for the time when I could really spend all day in there and not have to explain myself when I got home. Second, when I do go in, I can't help myself, and I check out enough books to fill my passenger seat, and then I promptly go home and keep them out for six months. Because, like I said, I don't have time to engage in the fantasy of reading a bunch of books, but that doesn't seem to stop me from THINKING I can. So, in effect, I end up keeping a bunch of books of which I can only read the first 20 pages of, and, six months later, I'm owing the library enough money to finance a librarian's vacation to Hawaii.

So, on my last trip, I finally put shackles on my fantasy and only checked out one book, then I sprinted from the library as if all the other books were chasing me, trying to pry my library card out of my pocket and check THEMSELVES out.

"Aha!," I said, to no one in particular. "I've finally beaten the affliction!" I got one book, I got out, and, I'll finish it and I'll return it in time. In a mere three weeks from now, I'll jog in slow motion to the return bin, slip the book in, and turn around and do a Rocky dance on the front porch. The librarians will all emerge from the shelves, still in slow motion, and they'll gather behind me and clap and nod as I Rocky-dance. Zoom in to my gleeful face, bouncing up and down. Freeze frame. Slow fade.

Yeah, right.

Yesterday, I get an email from the library. "You owe 26.75 on your recent checkout. Please return the book immediately to avoid being reported to collections." 26.75 (actually, only 14 bucks of that is the fine--the rest is a fee for losing the book, if that's what I did, which I didn't--I know I didn't lose it because I'm still reading it)! After three weeks, the late fee is something like 15 cents a day! Do the math! Then, tell me the answer because I'm too embarrassed to do the math myself!

That's a personal one-book record for me. I'm however, not proud of that. And, my wife is just baffled (to put it nicely) at my lack of library responsibility.

All this means, you say, is that I should just buy books. Well, I do that too. I have a whole shed full of used books that I'll read probably in the summer of 2020.

I think the remedy is to just stop reading. Just listen to podcasts, books on tape, and only read the hot link headlines on Cnn.com.

That way, I can stay out of collections, which will help assure that I don't get kicked out of that other important building in town--my house.

The Era of the Scary Songs

2007-02-06T11:35:00.000-08:00

Okay, so maybe what I'll do is just publish my rambling thoughts so that I can get a blog going here. I am fairly embarrassed, turning maroon over here, at my output. The Big Giant Software Giant has given me more homework than I had in college. Also, I've been playing with music, composing some stuff that has reggae riddims and banjo. Coupled with family and exercise (I can't go to the gym until 10 pm, once everyone's asleep and I do the dishes), and trying to write my own stuff (I've gotten off on a tangent trying to write a sitcom about a woman who works in a fancy, but wacky health club--the working title is Fit to Be Tied), I am so dang busy that I'm letting my chair at the blog meetings get covered with cobwebs and those empty sunflower seed shells that Badoozie keeps tossing on it.

So, until I have something substantial to say, I'm just going to say something fragmented and goofed-out.

Like, 70's music...I love it, really. Lots and lots of great songs. I came of double-digit age in the seventies, and I have solid memories of me lying on the shag green carpeted floor of my bedroom, listening to my mother's clock radio. I used to unplug it and bring it into my room, as fast as I could so that she wouldn't lose TOO much time on the clock (this was one of those clocks where the numbers were on flaps that were held up by little latches, so you couldn't wind it backwards, so if it fell behind in time, you had to wind it forward 24 hours to get back to the correct time, which I hardly ever did, which means that, slowly, my mother began being late to everything by odd increments that were only a few seconds long).

Anyway, I'd bring it into my room, yeah, and plug it in and lay down in front of it, the shades drawn, and I'd tune to K98 and curl up with the tinny speaker to hear Stevie Wonder, Paul McCartney and Wings, Earth Wind & Fire, and all the other 70's biggies, and, little Jeremiah was in a little private heaven.

The biggest problem I had with 70's songs was that some of them were awful scary. Yes, scary. The 70's was the Era of the Scary Songs.

I mean, as a kid, I lost a lot of sleep thanks to the scary songs. You know what I'm talking about. "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia," with bloodstains on the floor. And, "Tallahassee Bridge" with people jumping off and stuff.

And, how about that cheesy "Run Joey Run" song with that line: "Then Julie yelled, he's got a gun, and she stepped in front of me. Suddenly, a shot rang out, and I saw Julie falling."

And, Cher bellowing about "Gypsies Tramps and Thieves," which didn't say anything really scary, but had a scary feel and that line about men coming around to lay the money down always gave me a tic. Same with "Bless the Beasts and Children," but I think that scared me because it was in the movie of the same name where a kid got shot.

And, of course, the scariest, and most browbeating song I've ever heard: "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald." I mean, so much for a light foot! That guy just about pummelled me with fright, over and over again:

"That good ship and crew was a bone to be chewed."

"At 7PM a main hatchway caved in. He said fellas it's been good to know ya."

"And later that night when his lights went out of sight came the wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald."

"Superior, they say, never gives up her dead, when the gales of November come early."

That's just a sampling of the horror! I know, I could have turned off the radio, but I was mesmerized by that song, and it felt like the "gales of November" were blowing right through my rib cage, so I dare not move lest I become a resident of the "ice water mansion"! AAAHHH! To this day, I get spooked/angry/annoyed when I hear that song.

I don't miss the era of the scary songs. I was an impressionable kid who believed in ghosts, ghouls, hars, haints, Bloodybone (that was a beast my uncle made up), bigfoots, werewolves...well, you get it. The scary songs didn't help, especially when I thought I was safe with the clock radio, as full of mom as it was.

But, in a way, I'd like to see someone do a scary song like those today, because what passes for scary now is gang-banging tunes about busting caps in heads which, in comparison, is much scarier since it is more likely you'll end up getting shot than ending up on a sinking barge in the Great Lakes. I suppose it was the menace of those 70's songs, but the unlikelyhood that you'll actually have that happen, that makes for pleasant nostalgia, but that, years from now, when I think of the sentiments of 50 Cent or Snoop Dog, I'll actually really be thankful I made it through these years unshot.

Captured Color

2007-01-31T05:48:00.000-08:00

When was the last time you ever stopped to realize just how much color there is around you? Sunlight helps immensely to pull the color out of things, to invite the flowers to come and dance and throw off the color veil and just let it all hang out. But, I happen to live in a place where it is cloudy roughly 266 days a year, so I don't usually get the benefit of the sun being this sort of visual pied piper, leading color on a parade. Strangely enough, though, this doesn't hinder my experience of color, for I've found that low, lifeless-gray skies actually are a way to give carte blanche to color to express itself without the added garnish of sun gems.

So, the best time for me to experience the color is the time when the sky has none. I notice then that the searing red of the rhododendrons, the pale purple of the lilacs, and the deep yellow of the popcorn-bodied snapdragon flowers acquire a bit more personality when they have no sun to refine them, to tickle them, to tell them to stand up and make a speech. It's like snatching a glimpse of a lady twirling an apple in her hand in the produce section. You know? She's not posing, there are no bright lights on her, she's got no pressure to perform, no clear indication that anyone is looking. She's just there, living in a private moment, looking at an apple, not realizing anything about herself except that she needs five really good apples, and she's going to stare them down until they show themselves to her. Unburdened by anyone's expectations, she stands there just as herself, and she's gorgeous.

That's what flowers, grass, evergreens, and, heck, even paint does under the clouds. They just are themselves, offering up the color that they brought to the day, without adornment, without gleam, without self-consciousness. There is nothing more soothing than a flowery window basket flaring with color, hanging out in the muted gray of the day. We have a great deal of Northwest gardeners, even in the winter, who realize this and who know that offering their flowers as dapples on the ashen canvas makes you smile, even when you don’t realize it, which then, in turn, dapples your own face with captured color.

Makes a cloudy day worth it, I say.

Wild Pitch

2007-01-28T07:53:00.000-08:00

Here it is Sunday and I'm just now getting to the Friday word, which was "pitch."

Well, actually, I'm always just a few brain-cell bursts short of that word, at least when it means "to shovel an idea into someones head and then get out before they smack you." In my scribbling meanderings, I often jot down ideas for bad Hollywood movies starring Carrot Top or Pauly Shore, in the hope that someday, when I'm really bored, or bedridden, I'll down two martinis and then I'll develop one of the ideas into a treatment and then go to LA, drink a few more martinis, and then go pitch it to stone-faced studio people. Of course, I'm sure that after the first two martinis, I'd realize I'm too old for this and that, really, if I was going to be famous then I already would be famous and I wouldn't need a blog because you could read about me in People. So, in light of that, I'd just pitch the whole idea and order another round (how 'bout that? I used the phrase "pitch an idea" and made it mean two different things? As Mona said, this word is amazingly versatile).

So, this week, as a service (or disservice, you may think later), I'll dump a few of my ideas for anyone young enough, or bored enough, to take one of these and run to LA with it and pitch with wild abandon. Just don't forget to mention me on Oprah, or at least get the next round.

A straight-laced female cop against a crafty criminal who falls in love with her.
Epic battle of dog vs. cat carried out by alien races of dogs and cats reborn on Earth.
Murdered man reincarnated as a bird goes after the guy who killed him.
A fierce liberal and hardcore conservative meet in a survival situation.
A scholar ends up tutoring a hillbilly singer.
A dictator on the run ends up with small-town evangelical priest.
A master illusionist gets a job as a dance instructor for little girls.
A time traveler has to deal with a caveman stowaway as they both travel through time.
A rap star becomes a celebrated lounge singer.
A construction worker wants to become a fashion designer.
A diet fanatic wants to become a world champion professional eater.
A dog catcher, who wants dogs off the street, wants to create a city of dogs.
A typical, straight-laced CEO wants to be a punk singer.

The Time Travellin' Jeremiah

2007-01-25T06:58:00.000-08:00

Okay, I suppose it's time to hit the thrift store and find me a nice Member's Only jacket because it seems that I've hit the Time Skids and am now reverting back to the 80's, so I need to dress for it.

Over the last week, probably because, thanks to my doctor, my mortality has now brought its luggage over to my house and has moved in, I've found my mind and words drifting back to those glory days of yester-life when I could eat a pile of eggs and bacon and drink half a gallon of WHOLE milk for breakfast, then go to work, then come home, drink a couple of beers, go play some hoops, then take a nap and a shower, not necessarily in that order, then have to actually refuse gettin' it on with my girlfriend because, and I quote me, "we've got to try to LIMIT it to ONCE a day", then go eat an ultimate cheeseburger, then go out, have a few more drinks, then, at 3am, eat another pile of bacon and red meat and, the next day, not only feel just fine, but have lost 2 pounds of fat, and gained an extra ripple of muscle in my six-pack belly. Ah, the 80's.

Cases in point:

Three times this week, I've called my iPod a "Walkman."

I noticed that, at the gym, the only songs that really get me going are the songs in my "Best of the 80's" playlist whereupon I sing flawlessly to such bands as Thompson Twins, Duran Duran, and Blancmange.

I want someone to ask me what was the first video that MTV ever played so I can say "Why, that would be 'Video Killed the Radio Star.' Like, gag me with a spoon! Like who doesn't know THAT?" And, I'll smile like I just solved the mystery of consciousness. I've fantasized, actually, that I was on Who Wants to be a Millionaire and that my million dollar question concerned who the band was that did that first MTV video. Of the four choices, one would, of course, be The Buggles, and I'd laugh like a professional laugher as I blurted out the answer before I even got the "is that your final answer" balderdash.

I dreamed about "leg warmers."

I keep telling my sons about my college hijinks, not so much because I want to make them laugh at the fact that this old boring guy used to be a handful of fun, but because those stories are more like me reliving those days, like I'm actually telling MYSELF those stories and, the fact that I'm saying them out loud is okay because I'm saying it to my kids. But, the story of Riz surfing on an air conditioning grate he'd put up on top of a concrete cylinder, and the story of when my girlfriend had trusted me and my friend Evon to bake the cookies she'd plopped on a pan and handed to us and, as soon as she left the room, we ate all the dough all make me warm like I grew a coat.

So, I think I'm sliding backwards, getting like they say old men get. The only thing I need to figure out, and therapy may help, is either if I'm actually getting older or if by some miracle, I'm becoming like the old Jeremiah from 25 years ago. Either way, I suppose, I'm headed for insanity.

Which then, all I can do is follow Prince's advice from Purple Rain: "Let's Go Crazy!"

Message from the Fog

2007-01-22T16:20:00.000-08:00

It's unduly obscene that I'm not coming to the blog meetings lately. Do you need some insight into how my life is going right now? Consider this classic paradox:

"This sentence is not true."

If this sentence was true, then it is not true. However, if this sentence is not true, then, actually, it IS true.

That's how my life, mind, and general being is being assaulted at this moment--with amazingly confusing paradoxes! Where are my pills!?

Me and My Ultrasound

2007-01-08T08:21:00.000-08:00

Okay, now I'm REALLY back. And, proud to say that this post will officially break my "shorter posts" resolution (I've got to make up for missed days!).

See, I spent last week in some pain and in the doctor's office, wondering out loud what the gastric hell is wrong with my guts. Many diagnoses were put forth (he said in the passive voice) but were finally narrowed down to three: gallstones, ulcer, or something colon-ial.

We checked for gallstones last week. To do this, I had to go have an ultrasound, which I realized I hadn't seen for about ten years when my wife and I were looking at the embryonic darlingness that was to become my youngest son, who has grown up to be a healthy, happy, hurricane-force wind.

So, in the ultrasound chamber, I was eager to see my guts, which I'd never seen due to the fact I've consistently avoided alleyway knife fights (so far). I lay down and the young lady doing the procedure greased me up and directed me to look at the monitor hanging over my head. I asked her if this monitor was actually broadcasting the video of my guts on some cable channel and, if so, I was going to call some friends and tell them "Hey! My pancreas is on channel 143 now! Check it out!" However, that wasn't the case. "We're off the air," said the technician.

So, she got to sliding the ultrasound thing around on my belly and I tried to make out what I was seeing on the screen. In my highly medically trained opinion, judging by what I saw on the screen, my guts are generally just an indefinable bowl of snot, which I always suspected. "There's my problem," I told the tech. "My guts are really just snot. That causes bad stomachaches, I'm sure." She ignored me.

She did get one on me, though. As she scanned, she stopped and said "Look! You're going to have twins!" Ha, ha...

Finally, we crossed my liver region and, remarkably, I knew it instantly because my liver looks exactly like liver. It's got that same consistency and shade of the liver in the grocery store. And, I bet it tastes better (jeez, why did I write that?). I asked the tech if that was my liver and she confirmed that it was. I got a little choked up. From there, we journeyed to my gall bladder, which was the whole reason I was in here. Again, it was pretty nondescript. I tried to see if there were any stones in it, as if I could tell. I suppose the only way I'd be sure if there were really any stones in there would be if I should happen to see a silhouette of Mick Jagger or, even more ominously (but encouraging), Keith Richards. I contemplated telling the tech that joke, but she'd had enough of me and, in annoyance, she'd probably ultrasound my head and I'd end up like Jack Nicholson in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

Also, another thing--she kept having me hold my breath while she ultrasounded. I finally asked her why I had to hold my breath, and she said: "Well, I thought that would make your organs slide a little further down, but it's not working because you have such a solid stomach."

"Oh," I said on the outside. Inside, I pumped my fist and said "YES!!" Confirmation that the situps are working! I felt myself blushing...

In the end, all went well. My doc later told me that nothing was unusual in the ultrasound. My gall bladder didn't have stones, or beatles, or pixies in them. So, we can rule out needing to remove it medically.

This means we still have the stomach and colon to consider as sources of my pain. Which means I'll need invasive exams into each of those two organs this week. Which means I'll definitely have to tell you what it was like. Which means you might want to skip my colon post....

New Year's Reso-volutions

2007-01-01T20:57:00.002-08:00

How old have I gotten? Well, I missed the whole new year festivities because I was curled up like a cinnamon roll in my bed, at about 10 pm. I told myself, as I drifted into slumber, fireworks sporatically popping around the neighborhood, that I would try to get up around 11:55 or so and bust open some champagne and bring in 2007 properly. I also was seeing, somewhere in my periphery, a giant red castle with little dorm rooms in them and a big meeting room where I had to go to head up a meeting, but first, I had to pick up some food at the local, brick-lined deli. And who was there but this girl I knew from high school, who was very pretty, and who told me that I had a "vodka belly."

So, needless to say, I went on to my dreamy adventures in the castle, and didn't actually wake up until around 5:11 am, when the new year's party was long over, and people were busy sleeping off some serious regret.

However, I was already prepared with my resolutions, so I at least did my holiday duty. I only made five this year. Oh, sure, you can hear what they are!

1. Live each day as if this is as good as it gets.
2. Get rich.
3. Gain weight (this is my trick play to the cosmos, for whenever I profess to LOSE weight, I actually don't lose it, but just hide it from myself somewhere in the belly region and, with only a brief search, promptly find it)
4. Be more truthful. This doesn't mean to quit telling lies, which I don't do, but to delve more deeply into my Jeremiahness, with the risk of alienating maybe a few or more people. After all, I yam what I yam. Maybe you need to know who I yam...
5. Write shorter posts. Even shorter than this one.

The Jeremiah Journeys

2006-12-29T08:48:00.000-08:00

I was thinking--a dangerous thing indeed, and one which causes my left eye to twitch uncontrollably--how I could cut my travel bill down immensely.

This has been a humbling, and slightly sad holiday year for me, due to job insecurity. I'm used to taking the whole last part of December off, through New Years, to travel with my family to go visit my folks, go to Did-neyland, or even to someplace tropical, like Tijuana. But, this year, I stayed home, worked a lot, and got holiday greetings from my friends who got to go to tropical places and officially licensed theme parks.

But, I've got an idea for some cheap, fun travel. I was thinking, to start the journey, I take a photo of myself smiling so big that my lips meet at the back of my head, and send it to an out-of-state friend. I instruct that friend to prop my portrait up near some famous tourist landmark in their town, and take a photo of MY portrait at that famous landmark. The landmark should be clearly seen, so, for instance, if my friend is in Miami, it has to be obvious it's Miami because you can clearly see a mugging going on in the background, with South Beach art deco hotels as a backdrop.

Then, I'd tell my friend to send me the photo that they took, and then send my portrait to another friend of theirs, and tell them to repeat the process--prop me up near a landmark, shoot me, email me the resulting shot, send my portrait to one of thier out-of-state friends, and tell them to repeat the process. And so on, and so on...

I'm sure that there will always be a place for my portrait to go, and I will collect numerous photos of me in exotic to frightening locales. And, as I "travel", I'm sure my photo will get progressively more mangled, giving me that "weary world traveller" look that I usually get anyway after two weeks on the road with kids.

My compensation to the myriad photographers will be that I will publish a blog called The Jeremiah Journeys where I will post the photos, credit the photographer, and even include whatever words the photographer wanted to say about the shot, me, or my goofy ideas.

Who knows where I'll end up? Maybe back where I started, all wrinkled, torn at the edges, smeared with who-knows-what, and smelling a little funny, but still grinning like I had toothpicks lodged in my gums.

Present and Accounted For

2006-12-27T08:51:00.000-08:00

Hey. I'm just posting to let you know I haven't been blown away, at least not by a wind, and I haven't gone into hiding, at least not from my blog. It's just been, as Mona said, I've been hit by the busy stick, and not one being propelled by hurricane-force breezes. I got a voice recorder for Christmas, which is a dangerous toy. Plus, I'm setting up a wiki to post my novel and make it easier to read, and I'm so incredibly leading a big project at the Big Giant Software Giant, and I'm messing with music again, and generally being Uber Dad, so that's the update. I'll visit you all and many others in the days to come...

All is well, and I hope you all had a holiday and that no one flipped the turkey off the table because Uncle Redd "said something."

Dark Odors

2006-12-08T09:32:00.000-08:00

Well, again thanks to the incredible Mona, we have a Friday blog-spiration word, which is "dark". I opt to write about a vulgar brand of dark humor, inspired by a totally true news report that an American Airlines plane bound for Dallas was forced to make an emergency landing in Nashville because "a passenger lit a match to disguise the scent of flatulence."

Yeah, it seemed that this passenger was having some gastric disturbances and then apparently, in desperation, repeated a previous, failed, terrorist attack by lighting several matches. Her reason, though, was to conceal the odor of her fart. Passengers reported it (the odor of flame, not the odor of fart, which apparently was successfully concealed), and the pilots landed the plane accordingly. Upon landing, they expelled the passenger (no pun intended).

I'd think there would be other alternatives, since, and you are with me here, don't deny, I've cut a few on a plane before. You either do it in the bathroom, or position that little mini air spout above you in a strategic direction so that it blows the air from you to the baby sitting in front of you. Problem solved.

Well, the passenger didn't opt for that, so, I was thinking, after laughing for a while, that, especially for the guys out there, this is a serious call to action because, it seems, the bar on Competition Farting has now been officially raised. No more will under-the-bedcovers or inside-a-full-car farting be the ultimate expression of guy-ish-ness. Now, apparently, a fart has brought down a plane. Personally, as an official guy, I'm not sure how we can top that one. I mean, we've now got to aim for, like, clearing the Super Bowl stadium with a fart, or, I don't know, ruining next year's wine grapes with a well-placed poot so that we have no vintage from 2006. I'm open to suggestions.

However, because lighting a match on a plane just to conceal a fart is just so incredibly dumb, I have to wonder if this actually wasn't a terrorist attack, just delivered by a low-rent, ghetto terrorist. How do we not know that this lady didn't actually plan this, and consumed large servings of beans, cabbage, and milk before boarding and then was really attempting to LIGHT her fart, thereby causing an explosion or at least a burst of disorienting flame? However primitive, this is virtually undetectable, and, if created within the right person, like maybe Rush Limbaugh, possibly lethal.

So, now we may have to alter our airline security policies. Passengers may now be required to fart into a fart-a-lizer tube that will then determine the gas levels present in their system. Should they be high enough to be dangerously flammable, the passenger will not be allowed to board the plane until their gaseous levels have fallen to federal standards.

Problem is, this may assure that half the guys who ride planes today will need to get used to Greyhound schedules, but, hey, national security is a priority. If you can fart on a plane, then the terrorists have won!

Peek-A-Boo

2006-12-06T08:27:00.000-08:00

Absentee blogger. Guilty! I don't have much of an excuse except that I've been terribly busy. At this time of the year, I fall in a big hole and all of a sudden, I have half the time to do thrice the stuff. I can't even get out to the gym, so I feel like I've swollen to about 1200 pounds and would be mistaken for a volkswagen beetle if I was carrying some tires around.

But, really, just how busy was I? Was I just slacking off and am now trying to find some way to wriggle out of saying it? Maybe. You guess. Below are some things I might have been up to over the past week. You have to guess which ones are true! The fun, it just goes on!

I'll give you a hint--three are true. Have fun! Now!

Last week, Jeremiah was:

• Telling Denise Richards that she needs to stop calling me because, really, she missed me by about 14 years, 15 1/2 if you count how long I dated my wife, and I'm not up for those Hollywood Glitter-flash divorce/marriages and that, no, she can't even steal a kiss. You don't want me anyway. I'm a bad boy, I'm no good for you, I'll spend all your money on Dallas Cowboy tickets and electronic toys and, well, I'm real bad at cocktail party small talk, and I don't look good next to George Clooney. So, farewell to thee! But, before you go, could you sign about one hundred photos of you that I have in my closet? You're so sweet.

• Starting my next new position at the Big Giant Software Giant working for what may be the coolest product in the physical and quantum universe (as well as whatever universe LaToya Jackson lives in), and grinning so much that my smile may have to be surgically removed.

• Travelling back in time to tell one of my ex-girlfriends that her ending our year and a half relationship in one freaking night actually will be quite inconsequential in my future life and that, in fact, I'm breaking up with YOU! That reaction would have been a lot cooler than my real reaction, which was to start bawling like she had just wrenched my guts out with a hot pitchfork.

• Following the lead of my youngest as I strung Christmas lights all over my yard, tangling them in branches and leaves to create displays that will dazzle passersby in the night and will, sometime in January, cause me to have public tantrums as I try to untangle them from those same branches and leaves.

• When no one was looking, hugging the cat.

• Dancing around the house because the Cowboys beat the Giants, causing my family to huddle together in the living room, wide-eyed and whispering, hoping that daddy will, someday, be normal again.

• Taking a shower.

Nature Needs More Comfy Places to Sit

2006-11-29T06:16:00.000-08:00

During my snow day wanderings, I came upon this little convenience (and, as Burning Spear said: "We want more convenience. More endorsed checks. We want more convenience."). I laughed and then photographed.

And, then, of course, I sat. Here's the view.

I tell you, life would be so much more charming if people would just occasionally drag soft, fashionable furniture to great views and leave it there for all to enjoy. I mean, an occasional sofa in the front yard isn't going to cut it--a view of your El Camino on cinderblocks isn't what I'm talking about. I'm talking about a king-sized, cushy bed by the lake, or a loveseat on the edge of a canyon.

Thumbs up for scenic furniture disposal tactics! Ask not what your country can do for you...

Snow Problem

2006-11-28T07:21:00.001-08:00

I was going to rake the leaves, really. There was going to be a movement, a progression, a formal declaration of leaf war whereupon I was going to remove every leaf from the yard, with the scythe-like sweep of my mighty rake, I was going to rid the land, or at least my land, of some actually really beautiful orange and yellow patterned pieces of nature that I'll then stuff into a yard waste bin and shut the lid, the warm glow of fallen leaves in the filtered sun forever shut up in the dark, like crazy aunts.

Yeah, I was going to do that and, by golly, rotten luck, it snowed. It didn't just snow, but it rained snow. A gigantic snowball somewhere in heaven just blowed up real good and dumped, pumped, deposited, spammed, overloaded, dowsed, and embraced our fair Northwest town with white, marshmallow shards, ice twinkles, and little snowflake mermaids dancing in the dang streetlights (didn't I spray for little snowflake mermaids just last week?). Infested, I say!

It doesn't snow a whole lot down by the water here in the Great Northwest. We get the mountain snow, just about an hour or so away, so it's not like the sight of snow is so rare and weird that it makes us stand still and go "Duuuude," (though, to drive on our freeways in it, you would think so, as it seems to make people forget what order the pedals are in…). But, we are more used to waking up and finding puddles in our yards than we are to finding snow drifts, so it is kind of cool to see your yard in a different light, and to not go to work in conditions that some of the country operates normally in for three months out of the year.

And, the kids' voices get a little more electric, their faces a little more smiley. School gets shut down and they get revved up. They stand in the driveway and watch the flurries like they're watching a ballet performed entirely by pieces of candy.

We relish our little bit of snow, and, so do the muscles involved in pulling rakes across leaves, which, by the way, weren't hurting anybody anyway. Give 'em a break, not a rake! (Geez.)

Famous Turkey Quotes, Part 2

2006-11-23T22:21:00.001-08:00

"Okay, no more for me. I am absolutely stuffed."

"New Year's Eve? What's that?"

"Look, all we say is 'gobble gobble.' So really, they're just following orders."

"Remember, son, in America, any turkey can grow up to be eaten by the President."

"You don't think they admire us more than you? Then how come there's no whiskey called Wild CHICKEN?"

"Don't make me go Thanksgivin' on yo' ass."

"Now there's a brave turkey. He's really got giblets."

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

I'm So Not Blogging

2006-11-21T01:27:00.000-08:00

Tha Holidaze. The Turkey Daze. I get slow like gravy on these days. Slower than usual. So slow, a friend of mine once said, that you're going backwards. My phaser is set on stun, and it just went off in my pocket. That dream of sticky floors is how my days go. Turtles zoom past me, grinning. If I can catch a ride on a slug, I'll make it home faster than if I take the bus. Slow motion is blurry. I think I had a thought a couple of days ago, but now I'm beginning to believe it was just a billboard I read. It took me twenty minutes to finish reading the STOP sign.

The world is flying around me like the sparks from a welding torch, and I'm just sitting here licking on a lollipop. A real big lollipop. About the size of my van. I'm going to finish it though. Sometime around Jan. 2nd.

So, let's cruise in the lollipop, children.

Entitled

2006-11-15T10:53:00.000-08:00

Hey. I have some extra blog post titles I won't be using, but I thought I'd throw them out there, kind of like as a little "Free" table set up right in my blog. Feel free to take what you need. Maybe they can spur some abstract ideas, or dredge up some subconscious memories that will cure you and possibly save you thousands of dollars in therapy costs or many unpleasant moments. (I wish someone had told me the phrase "Yukon Jack smells like mint ice cream" before I actually got so horribly sick on Yukon Jack years ago that, after that, every time I smelled mint ice cream, I retched).

So, anyway, here they are. Use freely:

Crap jumpers
Seeds of Christians
Love in the preordained days
Blood in the cracks of the pages
Silent nightblood
I reach for the toothpaste
Deaf eyes
Several long dusty stares
I can't read sideways
Don't waste my toes
Liver shots
Manhole lover
Grab bag of rotten peaches
Bad, bad socks
Puddle of secretion
Sacramento momentos
Special effects cheerleaders
Slipping into uncrappiness
Look both ways before eating the booger
Speaking of my stomach
Cold indecision disguised as a milkshake
My whole world revolves around itself
Life under the bleachers
Sing mouse, sing
Modern man, antique inflatable woman
Trouble is on the bottom of my shoe
Like a giant squirrel I will reign over the nuts
Friends of carpet
Royal order of disorder

Can't Sleep

2006-11-14T00:46:00.000-08:00

I can't sleep on the nights I work out. I don't get to the gym until around 10 and it closes at 11, so I slam myself and then, afterwards, stay wide awake. I only go to bed because I know I have to.

To caress the time, I go to look at my boys sleeping, watching those delicate chests rise and fall under the covers. Their dreaming faces are the picture of peace and I smile thinking that they feel so comfortable under this roof to fall asleep with their innocence on display. I wonder why I ever get mad at them. They are really just me repackaged. All my latent talents, all my arcane tendencies, all my hidden fears, all have become a Broadway production in my boys. I want to whisper an apology for giving them some of my faults, and I want to shake their hands for having the guts and ability to be ten times the artist/humorist/scholar/handsome dude than I ever was and will ever be.

The night is quiet, unsettlingly so. It's quiet enough that I wonder if my thoughts are leaking into the audible range. Maybe dogs on the block can hear my shrill synapses firing. I listen for a howl of understanding. I only get the whine of my hard drive, and the occasional deep breath of those sleeping guys of mine. I'm home. In more ways than one. That thought alone is what is going to finally get me to sleep.

Today's Agenda: Daydream for Five Minutes

2006-11-13T10:49:00.000-08:00

You know what I want? I want a week where I don't need to be anywhere, where no one is expecting me to do anything, where when I wake up and when I go to bed have no bearing on anything except the pillow. I don’t want the phone to be for me, I don't want to care what time it is, or how long I've been in the bathroom, or when the deadline is. I want a week where no one interrupts me. I want to sit down and not have to get up until I decide it's time to get up. I want to forget to zip up my pants and not remember for hours and when I do remember, it won't matter because I haven't been out in public anyway. In fact, I probably never even put my pants on in the first place. I want a week where the room can get as cold or as hot as I want it to get, and where I can take my shoes off in the tub if I want to. I want a week where I can forget something at home and then take as long as I need to go back to get it without worrying about missing some form of transportation, or missing my place in line, or having to explain it to anyone. I want to say something really stupid and then get to laugh at myself because no one heard it anyway. I want to see what it's like to hang around in a bookstore all day and talk to strangers. I want to sit down with a bottle of wine (or two) and watch all the episodes of Sanford and Son, back to back. I want to fall asleep on the stairs and I want to leave my dishes in the sink. I want to leave every light on in the house!

Just a week! One week! Then I'll come back to work, I'll slip back into my life, and I'll look perfectly normal except for this gigantic grin on my face that you'll swear is one step from psychotic, and you will be right, except it won't be the bad psychosis. It'll be the one that makes you laugh because you've realized that your socks actually TICKLE, that eyeglasses are really funny, and that "toenail" and "pants" are hilarious words and that if you put them together to read "toenail pants" they multiply themselves with funniness, and you also realize that not enough people use the word "funniness" with enough-ity.

All it would take would be a week where I could stand in the middle of the floor for an hour and not have to move. I've got to schedule one of those weeks. I'll make that a to-do item, and block a meeting, and check dependencies and deliverables. I've got to see to contingencies and make sure that all is covered, going forward, and I need to see that I've examined all sides of the issue before I ship my decision and, it needs to go through testing and verification phases before I can finalize it, and then, and only then, can I enjoy it. I think the market can support a free week for Jeremiah, so, let's move to phase two! Adjourned! Grab a donut on the way out!

A Tolerant Friday

2006-11-10T23:05:00.000-08:00

The word for this week is "tolerant". As always, I thank the rockin' Mona for running the show. Here is my bit, courtesy of a 10-minute sprint.

Of My Desire, I'm Tolerant

There was this thing between me and the girl. It was a wall. No, a real wall. She lived next door, with her mother, and I lived with my wife. The girl came out at 7 am each weekday, to go to her job at some diner, I was sure. She was dressed in a pink skirt, a white blouse, and a tiara and she carried a black leather purse and she chewed bubblegum. I know this because I can hear her alarm clock go off at 5:30 am and I can hear the shower burst on at 5:40 am and then I can hear her sing and then stop suddenly because she didn't want to wake her mother, who was an invalid and who would just scream for her to shut up because that was the easier thing to do, and the most effective. I'd then hear her tromp about, bumping into things, closing doors, sliding her windows open and shut. Finally, I'd hear silence, complete silence, and I'd wonder what she was doing. Was she praying? Was she reading something? Was she contemplating plunging from the window to leave a doll-dressed, beautiful corpse cracked and split on the sidewalk?

One morning, I timed it just right and I pulled away from my wife's sleeping heat and went out to the hallway to get my paper just as the girl came from her apartment. She was glowing in the dull light that managed to get in through the smudged window down the hall. She was demure and had pearl skin and little eyes and her red hair tumbled like a jumble of the letter C, thousands of the letters C. She looked at me as she closed her door and she smiled and then, just as quickly, turned her head and kept walking, the pink skirt bobbing just below the curve of where her legs began.

I watched her too long and she looked back and I glanced down to the paper I held. It was upside down, but I could read the headline:

"Evidence of attack…" the headline said.

I heard her get onto the elevator and the door slide shut, and I went back into my apartment. I was breathing like an accordion.

For a few days, weeks, I caught her out in the hall. I would just lie in the bed, waiting for her routine to finish, then I nearly darted out there to see her, in her same pink outfit, her same red hair, only the paper headline and the color of the light changing every day.

Finally, I got the courage up.

"Hey," I said as she closed her door and I picked up the paper and read the headline. It read "Man confesses…"

"Yeah," she said, frowning.

"You are beautiful in that skirt," I said. I smiled, acted embarrassed, and looked back to the paper.

"Oh. Well, thank you," she said, her voice sharp as a summer morning. "So, now I suppose you think I should fall in love with you?" And she winked and walked away.

I stood there until my feet fell asleep.

I don't go out there early anymore. I keep the wall between us, and I wait until she leaves. As I hear her door close and her feet landing on the hallway carpet as she walks to the elevator, I imagine her pink skirt, bobbing, just below the curve of my straining heart.

Drop Down and Give Me Zen

2006-11-08T23:56:00.000-08:00

When I was done pounding my body at the gym, blasting my blood through my veins at speeds that would get my blood cells arrested on the road, and dripping sweat almost in rhythm with the rain outside, I was able to think again, and, as those thoughts started to race, like they always do, revving up alongside each other like hot-rodding teens, daring their idle chatter to try to beat the torque of the idle chatter idling next to them, I realized two things: I realized why I exercise, and I realize why I keep coming to this blog.

I exercise not because I need to get back into college shape because, frankly, that would mean I'd need to lose 50 more pounds, gain about 20 Saturday night poetry night's worth of hipness, gain ten thousand minutes of naive bravado, and increase my social life by about three girlfriends, (1000 if you count the ones that I WISHED I could date). Not going to happen.

No, I exercise because, for an hour, I don't have to think. When I exercise, my mind shuts down, or, maybe, just gets outrun. I can then just be a body. I can ram my legs and arms into weights, whip my legs round and round on a stationary cycle (with "no destination, no scenery, and no roads" as Speech says--though, sometimes, there IS scenery, if you know what I mean...), and stretch my thighs across distances that, in normal life, I wouldn't bother to cross unless there was no one around to pick up what I dropped. I can stop my mind from racing with itself.

When I exercise, all I do is hear the music coming from my iPod, count my reps, and feel my heart pounding in my neck. I don't mull over anything, curse my awkward day, or replay all the things I COULD have said. I just sweat, pound, lift, groan, hear Apples In Stereo (great band), count my reps, feel glorious pain, grunt, shiver, and, finally, feel the wonderful release of muscle deciding that it has had enough and will now miraculously become a bowl of spaghetti, thank you.

No thoughts. No self-criticisms, regrets, arcane desires, or flat-out annoying bursts of inner ranting rising and bursting like a rolling boil. Nothing but a series of levers and pulleys I become. I'm the physical rendering of all those workers' efforts in that movie Metropolis. This is glorious. This is a release from myself. An old friend of mine once called me a shark. I wondered if he was calling me that because he'd seen how I attack a plate of boiled crawfish, but, actually, he explained his comparison by saying that I was like a shark because it seemed like I never stopped moving.

But, I do stop moving, I just never let anyone see it. You ever drop the strings of a marionette? What happens to the marionette is what it looks like when I stop moving. Not pretty.

So, I keep moving, but I can't deal with all the movement being done by monkey mind. Sometimes, I need to go fight some resistance, like weights, or having to wrestle stuff from my head and onto a keyboard.

Which brings me to why I keep coming back to this blog. It too is another release, another way I can drain the thought swell in my head. I wish I had brilliant thoughts. Instead, they are more like chatter, more like what you hear if you attend a pro football game--60,000 or so voices, all at a different tone, only every now and then a majority of them rising to concentrate on and speak about the same thing--a great play, or a bad call, or the cheerleaders.

My blog is hard to come to because I know when I do, I will spill my thought bile and drop my marionette on it and it'll look funny when I'm done, sometimes so much so that I'll pull the plug on it and let my words drain out into the ether. Most of the time, the mess I make stays, and you "get" to read it.

So, anyway, what I think I'm trying to say is the same thing I want to say to the health club. Thanks for being here, thanks for welcoming me when I show up, and thanks for letting me pound on you for a while. It's therapy to me. I'd need a few more blogs, and a hundred more years, to really get my mind flossed, and I'll need to gain about 500 pounds more bravery to even approach a blog daily to work out. But, geez, my mind needs to lose some weight, so I'll keep showing up.

Mind in the Toilet

2006-11-06T09:13:00.000-08:00

My insane-o-meter tripped at about 2:39 (or so) in the AM this morning, and it woke me up with an idea that, frankly, proves once again why I call it the insane-o-meter.

One second before, I was dreaming about some game involving shoeboxes and personal possessions that we were all scrambling to collect and I was having a strange conversation with a tall girl. The next second, I was wide awake, rain hitting my roof like pebbles, and I was thinking of toilets.

Of course, at that time of the morning, it isn't unusual to think of toilets since, well, I'm sure there are toilets that get some action around 2:39 AM or so. But, that wasn't the direction of my thoughts. No, actually, I was thinking about more than one toilet. I was thinking about the WORLD'S toilets.

I was thinking that it would be a great idea to write a travel book about what different toilets were like around the world, both public and private, and the how the history of sanitation in that particular country led to the current state of the facilities there. I wanted to explore ancient means of "disposal" and look at the most innovative, as well as the least, and tie it all in to a short, overall social/political history of personal privacy in the country or place that I visit. I want to explore toilets in the Philipines, or in Thailand, in rural areas of East Europe, in the expanses of Alaska, in Africa, and, of course, of the rich and famous.

I want to call it: "When You Gotta Go."

I lay in bed, mentally trying to write the introduction, and after about an hour, I was officially insane. I could feel sweat beading up around my neck, my stomach went sour, and I kept visualizing sewer systems rushing past, effluvia tumbling through them, and me with my notebook, scribbling descriptions. My insane-o-meter went into the red, and did a buzz that meant, if I kept following this thought process, I will not get back to sleep ever again.

I finally had to just get up, go downstairs and pace for a while. I drank some milk, futzed with my iPod, went outside and looked at the rain (gutter, there's a gutter--flowing, stuff flowing, bubbling gurgling....aaaaah!) and I came back in and went back to my bed and finally went to sleep, because I still needed to finish talking to the tall girl. And, no, I didn't tell her anything about the crazy thoughts I was having in my waking life. Thank God for the deliverance of abstract dreams.

Taking the Friday Train

2006-11-03T06:50:00.000-08:00

So today's word is "train". I got ahead of myself, got all visionary and stuff and went ahead and just wrote a train bit last week. Speaking of visionary, I'm reminded of a Stephen Wright quote, where he said: "I'm a peripheral visionary. I can see into the future, but only way off to the side."

Anyway, though I sent in my entry early, I'm still going to contribute today because I'm feeling all levititious, which is much better than I felt yesterday. I was pretty grounded. It was one of those days where you wonder if there's any Prozac in the first aid cabinet, and you go to look, and of course there is none, but you actually think that might be something to suggest in the next meeting.

So,first, in honor of the word "train", I got up today and listened to "Train, Train" by Blackfoot ("Train, train. Take me on out of this town"), "Train in Vain" by the Clash ("Stand by me, or not at all"), "Stop That Train" by Bob Marley ("Some live in big, but most live in small") and "Breakdown" by Jack Johnson ("I hope this old train breaks down, then I could take a walk around").

And, then, I opened up my journal, my train of thoughts, and I thought I'd invite you for a ride by excerpting it here. In my journal, I write as a guy named Ignatious Abalone, and all he does is just drive around and observe stuff and try to write the story of it. He's a hobo on the train of life. Here are some of his ramblings:

Drive anywhere, all where, until the road signs no longer make sense. From the car, I saw a roadside sign that read "Good Luck Comets and Mules". I thought, "Yes, good luck. But, what about the oranges?"
-----
They call them vast skies, the torrent under which she lives. She wishes for hurricanes and meteors because that would be a relief, a calming of sorts. The stimulation is sometimes too great and she must dig a hole a thousand memories deep to hide within. So sad. And, yet, so much like forgiveness.
----
They resided somewhere between black and white. Heaven gave them the tools to be of great influence. Sometimes, they spoke like prophets and, other times, they spoke like fools. No one could tell the difference.
----
Observation: An old lady was sitting at a table and her face looked like her thoughts were frozen in 1960. As I passed near her, a man behind me said: "She's a hypochondriac." The girl with him then said, "Oh, then we should walk the other way."
----
There are tests everyday for which there is the feeling that no study was ever formally undertaken. However, know that life to that point was actually the study and to pass the test only means to include oneself fully in the test.
-----
Across the silent water to talk to a boy that she loved. There was always water, deep, but receptive, no danger--you are always boyant. Water simple--we ramble past explanation and land at the shore where the winds pick up as the sun goes down and fathers stand with their children, pulling aloft kites that slice the breezes.

Choo, choo...!

Musical Revelations, Part 6

2006-11-02T09:23:00.000-08:00

Every now and then, I have little musical revelations that are probably new to only me. But, since I can't think of anything else to write about, I'll bug you with my "latest" revelations:

"Hotel California" is a reggae song!

Listen to the beat. It is the classic reggae "one drop" rhythm (or, as they say in the Isle of Springs, "riddim"). The skank (guitar stroke) is on 2 and 4 and there is a kick drum on 3. Classic reggae beat. The drum fills, the vocal phrasing, it's reggae! It just hit me on the freeway the other day. The Eagles were about 30 years ahead of me, as well as probably some of you. Also, now that I'm thinking about it, America's "Horse With No Name" would make a great reggae song itself. Somebody get on it.

"Deacon Blues" is a beatnik version of "American Pie"!

Taking nothing away from Don McLean's classic happysad sing-along, Steely Dan came up with a hipster, hipper version. It had all the components of "Pie": drinking booze, dying, and youthful enthusiasm and carefree-ness, and verses that may take years to memorize, but an instantly unforgettable chorus. It added a certain smarmy careless poet air, evoking images of smoky bars, crooked Kangols, slinky ladies with cigarettes, and self-important guys with goatees.

Blue Oyster Cult still holds up!

"Don't Fear the Reaper" remains scary (but still needs more cowbell). "Burning For You" is still on my top ten list of being one of the grooviest rock and roll tunes I've ever heard. I played "Joan Crawford" for the kids and they both told me it scared them too much to hear again.

Eminem is a(n evil) genius.

Yeah, okay, I lost you. But, man, the guy has a real talent for poetic rapping (I know, to some people, that's like saying that flies have a real talent for throwing up, as if you want to glorify throwing up). He curses horribly, is generally hateful, and even has what I think is one of the most violent, ugly songs I've ever heard (check out "97 Bonnie and Clyde" if you dare--I don't endorse that song, by the way), but just listen and be amazed by his cadence and pacing and exceptional internal rhymes, and not to mention intensity, in "Lose Yourself" and "The Way I Am" and "Stan" and you know you are hearing a gifted, albiet very messed up, young man.

I've been doing too much nostalgia lately, huh?

i Toons

2006-11-01T08:24:00.000-08:00

I was watching cartoons with the kids the other day and I see that things have really changed from Back In Tha Day. We have more cartoons to choose from since The Simpsons made animation cool again. The result is far more, um, segmented levels of cartoons, where Scooby Doo and The Jetsons had to serve all kids in the world, now we can have animations that serve real little kids, little kids, innocent kids, "becoming aware" kids, sadistic kids, and, of course, adult kids (that is, adults who are like kids and kids who like to think they are like adults).

The result, as you are probably aware of, especially if you have kids, is that we get stuff so sweet that it gives you cavities (Little Bill) to cartoons so hateful that YOU even want to strangle a cat after watching it (Ed, Ed, and Eddy) to cartoons that are so vulgar and inappropriate that you laugh uncontrollably at them (South Park) to cartoons that, somehow, land in the middle of all of that (Sponge Bob). You can no longer just turn on some cartoons for your kids and then leave the room because, while you're in the other room, you'll suddenly hear "You are such an ass!" come from the TV where, you swore, there was just a family cartoon on, where a whole family was just in a car going on vacation. I mean, there was a dog and a baby. How could that go so horribly wrong? (Well, okay, if you've ever been on a long car trip with the kids...)

I then got all nostalgic in my head and I tried to remember the good-natured, albiet pointless, cartoons that we watched growing up, and I sighed at the bright-eyed goofiness of them all as they seem like Steamboat Mickey to us now, in their awkward animation and stilted messages. But, hey, I spent hours with them, and they deserve some props. And, now that I think back on them, maybe they weren't as innocent as I thought they were:

Hong Kong Phooey

All I can recall is his nasally voice, and that thin mask that apparently kept him unrecognizable, though, from what I knew as a kid, dogs didn't "recognize" each other by paying attention to the head end of the body, but, nevermind, Hong Kong Phooey had the neatest theme song. "Hong Kong Phooey, number one super guy. Hong Kong Phooey, quicker than the human eye!"

Underdog

Oh yeah, another nasally dog hero, but who was perpetually in love and who spent his powers rescuing the same dog over and over again. That was special, but amazingly boring. His theme song was far more menacing than he was. And, for the rest of my life, whenever someone says "We are the underdog", I'm not going to think of a person who struggles valiantly, often victoriously, against grander opponents, but I'm going to think of a little white dog with a "U" on his red shirt, and a voice like a nose.

Super Chicken

A chicken with a lion sidekick. This should have been a disasterous relationship. Instead, it was about a guy who who drove around in a spaceship thing and he had a seizure when he became super. That sounds like an acid trip to me. But, at the time, it was delightfully over the top. And the line "you knew the job was dangerous when you took it" lives forever in my repertoire, as does the reasurring "buck-akkkkk!" at the end of the theme song. Whew, here comes a chicken in a spaceship to save us all! Pass me another mushroom!

George of the Jungle

I could never figure out this one, which is why I was compelled to watch every episode. I thought that eventually, I'd learn that slamming yourself into trees was actually going to teach me something. In a way, now that I look back on it, it did try to teach me pretty much what it's like to go to work every day. And, that Pella and Persa thing--I didn't get it as a kid, why he'd want these yucky girls hanging around all the time. As a college boy, though, it made perfect sense.

Speed Racer

Our first exposure to anime. Little did we know how hooked we'd get. The big eyes, the poses that the characters would hold for about an hour while only their mouth moved, the spectacular fiery crashes that we just didn't get in the Jetsons, and, of course, the unintelligible, rapid-fire dialogue that, I now believe, had more to do with speed than they were going to tell us. I loved the Mach 5. It was a boy's dream. I used to tell my parents that if we got a Mach 5, we could go anywhere--we could launch ourselves over traffic, we could cut down trees as we roared through the forest--why didn't we just get a Mach 5? Mom just said that it was Speed Racer's car. His legend only grew.

The Super Friends

It was hard for me to imagine super heroes around a table. It was like trying to imagine football players, in full uniform, knitting. But, when they sprung into action, I was rapt. Wonder Woman in the invisible airplane, which I didn't get, and Aquaman controlling the ocean, Superman knocking over big stuff, and, of course, Hawkman, who I totally identified with because, in my own creaky social maneouvers, I often felt like a shirtless guy with huge wings and a really stupid headpiece.

Any others?

Daddy and the Train

2006-10-27T09:20:00.000-07:00

(This is a long post, but you have the weekend to read it!)

When I was introduced to my team the first week I joined the Big Giant Software Giant, our manager told me "Okay, give us a short history of yourself, and, tell us a shocking story about yourself."

My gulp was audible. I do not like public speaking. I can feel every syllable of every word I say when I speak to an audience, and it is like I'm throwing up those words. And, they don't come out of my mouth and disappear. They curl back into my ears and sit there, buzzing, mocking me, echoing in my head. I sweat and stammer. I want to yell out to the crowd "Quit looking at me! Why are you looking at me? And, you're listening to me too! How dare you! Can't you see I'm dying up here?"

On top of that, 20 people awaiting you to tell them a dang IMPROMPTU story, which you know also has to be funny, yet clean, and fairly coherant, is more pressure than having to explain to your boss why you missed a critical deadline three weeks in a row. There's this singeing, anticipatory silence as forty eyes (80, if you count the glasses) and zillions of (overactive) brain cells await your enlightening words which will lift them from the drudgery of the moment and send them sailing on the winds of glee, with a memory of a delightful story that they can recall and still grin about as they sit on a freeway later.

Pressure! Hissssssss! I almost just got up and sprinted out of the room, trailing my notebook and pencils, my badge, and my shoes and socks.

Instead, I remembered the words of the goddess Nike who said: "Just do it...we ain't got all day. And, besides, you look ridiculous just sitting there shivering." (That's the original quote--the shoe company edited it. I bet you didn't know that...).

So, I did it. This is the story I told:

Well, the most shocking thing I've ever done, that I can say in public, is that I jumped off a train. Yes, a moving train.

See, it was my oldest son's 6th birthday, and he loved trains, so we decided we'd take a trip to a neighboring city, and back, on an Amtrak. We invited a couple of other kids and their parents and we all boarded with a smile. All went well on the trip to the neighboring city, which was about 40 miles away. However, as we arrived and pulled into the train station, my son got out a bag of peanuts and tried to open it himself.

Well, he opened it alright. All the way. Peanuts went everywhere. But, I just shrugged (okay, I winced a little bit...okay, I put my hands over my eyes too...okay, yeah, I MIGHT have said a couple of things under my breath too) and told everyone in the party to get off the train and that I'd clean up the peanuts and meet them in the station.

Dutiful Dad set to cleaning then, and feeling pretty glad, actually, to have a few minutes of time to myself, even if it was on my knees with my hands under a train seat. As I put the last peanut in one of our trash bags, though, my mood took a sudden dive.

The train was starting to move.

I at first couldn't believe it, but, that disbelief only lasted a second because the train REALLY WAS MOVING.

I quickly found a ticket-taker and I told him that I needed to get off here and that he needed to stop the train. He looked at me like I said "So, this is the train to Hawaii, right?" Well, actually, I think he was looking at me strangely, with a hint of amused incredulity, because I told him to stop the train and let me off.

"Sir," he said, "this train will stop when it gets to its destination." This destination was the next city--40 more miles away.

So, I had to sit down and think. I might add here that no one in my party had cell phones. This wasn't unusual. This was before the general public realized that not having a cell phone when you left the house was akin to not having pants when you left the house.

I said to myself, "Okay, self, here are your options: Face your wife's wrath by inexplicably staying on the train until the next city, thereby leaving your son's birthday party and leaving them wondering what the heck happened to you, and you probably will spend the rest of the day reconnecting with them. Or, jump off the dang train."

The decision took a split second to make.

I went between the cars and opened the door there and looked out at the ground. It truthfully didn't look like we were going that fast. I could see every rock in the graveled yard as we passed them. My addled brain said "Now, if we were going fast, those rocks would be blurry. So, we're going slow." I'm not sure where that logic came from, and how that was supposed to apply, but I don't suggest using it very often to judge safe speed.

Anyway, I figured we were going about 20 miles an hour. My brain said "See! That's SLOW!"

Without another thought, I jumped.

I don't know much about physics, but here's something I learned, or rather, something I forgot that I learned back in grade school: If the train is going 20 MPH, then, so am I. The ground, however, is going ZERO MPH. Therefore, leaping from a train going 20 MPH is like firing myself at that speed, directly onto the ground, which isn't moving. Top human running speed is around 20 MPH. So, jumping from the train onto gravel is the same as me running on a sidewalk as fast as I possibly can, and then, when I reach top speed, suddenly launching myself into a dive to the ground. And, I won't even be going 20 MPH if I do that since I can't run at top human speed, unless, maybe, it's last call.

The conclusion is: I'm going to get really hurt. And, I did. When I hit the ground, I rolled uncontrollably for about five seconds. I spun, flipped, cartwheeled, and bounced before coming to rest about two feet from the train wheels. I could smell the oil on the wheels, and see them turning. They were not blurred, so they were turning slowly, but, I don't think that would have made any difference if I'd ended up under them.

So, anyway, I stood up and assessed the damage. The fact that I could stand up was a good sign. However, I was a mess. My jeans and shirt were torn. I was bleeding in about twenty different places. My knees hurt. My fingers, of all things, hurt. And, my back hurt. Otherwise, I was fine.

I sprinted back to the station, which was just a couple of blocks away, and entered the lobby. Now, my wife had no idea what had just transpired, so you can imagine her shock when I walked in looking like I'd just fought a lion. The last time she saw me, I was clean and smiling.

Just as I walked in, the guy in the ticket booth ran toward me and started yelling at me. Apparently, HE knew what happened because the conductor had radioed the station because, I'm sure, some passenger witnessed the whole thing (and didn't tape it--darn!).

So, there I was, tattered, hurting, and getting yelled at. And, I thought this was the BEST choice to make.

Anyway, on each following day, the pain just got worse and worse. I was so sore that I hurt if someone even THOUGHT about me, much less touched me. It was a week before I felt somewhat normal again. And, I got no sympathy for my pain, deservedly so. My wife said that she would have been mad if I had continued on the train, but would not have expected me to JUMP off the train. In fact, the fact that I did jump off the train made her so mad that she wanted to push me in front of a train for being so stupid.

And, that's my shocking story.

(People laughed continually throughout it, so I guess I did incite some glee. Though, now, they look at me funny when I walk past them. I think they worry about me now.)

Misty Watercolored Memories

2006-10-26T05:37:00.000-07:00

Back in my ambitious, idealistic, grandstanding youth, I used to write a column for an alternative newspaper back in the south, as well as serve as its music editor. It was a fairly popular rag--it had a circulation of 30,000 and was pretty much the only paper that served the local underground arts scene. I wrote an entire page of music happenings, which was one-third calendar, and two-thirds opinion. I also wrote about two pages of concert and record reviews and band interviews, all more about me than the music.

What that meant was that, each week, I could publish drunken, rambling, old-man-waving-a-cane diatribes of my choice, on a subject of my choice, without much fear of being edited since my editors were themselves drunken, rambling guys who were often not in a state to drive, much less edit. I did, somewhat, have to fear public repercussion from members of the local music scene, should I write something scathing, which I, of course, did frequently. My in-your-face-ness got me some scorn, but it also got me some measure of fame that, in turn, got me free drinks and adoring ladies sidling up to me at the bar, which, at age 24, are pretty much the only things I required to stay alive (well, at age 41, I can't say that I don't require the same things, but now I just don't get them...).

I did it all, now that I think on it, for no other reason than the fact that being a butthead got you more attention than being a flowerhead. Hell, I don't even know what a "flowerhead" is. I got a chance to be a grumpy critic, a curmudgeonous socialite, and a psuedo-thoughtful wordsmith, with the world as my subject matter. Everything, except myself, was a potential target.

I am reminded of this because, just yesterday, I was listening to a Depeche Mode song, "Leave In Silence," and I chuckled. Not because of the song, but because of how I floridly described the song back in my music reviewer days as "displaced, clinical, dark funk" that left you "shivering in your groove." Jeez, I loved myself. I went on to remember how I described The Sundays lead singer as having a voice that "was like having an ice cube rubbed all over you" and how I said that A Tribe Called Quest was "a little Afrocentric" with rapper Q-tip being able to "drop the temperature in a room by 10 degrees everytime he raps." I was in a full-on guffaw at myself at that point.

I then decided to pull out some of the old copies of myself and read, and wince, at my bold, alterna-literary equivalents of throwing paint against a wall and calling it genius. I did a whole column tracking the etymology of the word "fuck" (which is interesting, and which I ended by saying that "I read one quote that said it is a word that 'should not be used in polite company.' That doesn't mean that you should watch what you say. It just means that you should avoid polite company.").

I wrote a column trashing my girlfriend's ferret, which turned out to be one of the dumbest things I've ever done. It wasn't until voluminous apologies and kisses on the ferret that I was forgiven for that one--I nearly got my wish of having the ferret move out, except, she would have gone with it.

I wrote an article about a local guitarist who liked raga, except, since I never heard of raga and didn't quite hear the pronounciation right, and because Google didn't exist then, so how the heck was I going to research anything, I referred to as "araga" the whole article. His friends laughed at me the whole week (I blush to this day).

I was all over the place, and, by the time I left the paper, I had about 15,000 people glad to see me go so that they could stop entertaining thoughts of killing me (my likeness was actually burned in effigy at one local concert), and I had about the same number of people wishing me well.

My only point here is that I see that I've posted 112 times on the School of Levitation, and I will post at least 112 more and then will stop one day and then will come back and read the postings.

I wonder if I'll do the wincing I did when I read my old printed postings in the local alternative rag. I wonder if I'll go "500 words on Denise Richards! Man, that must have been a good martini." Or will I say, "Now why did I have to mention going to the toilet, of all things?" and, "I misspelled something every post!"

Don't know. But, if nothing else, just like reading my old ambitious, idealistic, grandstanding, pseudo-thoughtful self, I think I'll laugh and sprout goosebumps of embarassment at the same time. And, I'll probably realize, with some odd pride, that after all these years, I really haven't changed at all.

Blog Catchup Day

2006-10-23T05:43:00.000-07:00

Friday, Oct. 20, 8:25 am

I'm driving to work, still sitting in traffic, even though I'm now taking this new, low-stress, country road route which, apparently, got leaked to the New York Times and is now the preferred route for all the people I used to spend time with on the freeway. In fact, I thought I recognized a driver or two, sitting next to me, grinning over the steam of their coffee cups. Or, at least that's what my strained mind was telling me I was seeing. Anyway, I'm thinking of the Friday poetry word, which was a phrase, which was "left behind" and I came up with a thought that bubbled from my discomfort at idling away my years on the road to a corporate job. I'd love to be strolling these country roads instead of polluting them. So, in light of that phrase, I was reminded of an old friend who had long dreads, but managed to get himself a job at a corporation, where he worked for years, accomplishing all sorts of boardroom-laudable goals. But, one day, he confided in me, saying:

"You know, Jeremiah. I feel like, everyday, all I do is walk around juggling a dozen glass balls. Juggle, juggle, juggle. And I scar up my heart with the stress of keeping all those glass balls airborne. Well, you know what? One of these days, I'm going to stop juggling, turn my back on those glass balls, and walk away, with the sound of a dozen glass balls smashing on the floor behind me."

I loved that imagery (he was an expressive soul--he inspired me to speak more "astrally" when I was around him, if for no other reason than to see if I could keep our conversation intelligently, yet georgeously, abstract), and I never forgot it. However, it wasn't until I saw the Friday word that his own words came back to me.

What really made my heart swell, though, was that I remembered that a couple of years after our conversation about the glass balls, I called on him at his job. He was no longer there. He'd resigned, they said. I smiled, as I imagined his desk now empty, except for dozens of twinkling shards of glass scattered all around his space.

Saturday, Oct. 21 1:39 pm

Had lunch with the family and friends at a great Vietnamese place downtown. I had the "anchovery soup," which was only slightly anchovery, and ancho-very good. As I walked back to my car, though, I walked a couple of blocks through an alley and, for the entire time, I was assaulted by the flat, ammonia odor of urine. I couldn't escape it. I didn't want to hold my breath because my evil imagination, which loves to screw with me, said that I would then be holding urine breath. And, however, I didn't want to breathe because my evil nose, which seems to get more sensitive the worse an odor is, kept me in full realization that I was breathing up a good dose of urine. I just walked on through, finally emerging into the fresh air of car exhaust, and I wondered--how are we going to get that smell out of the alleys? Should we douse the place with bleach early one Sunday morning, and rinse it? Should we release some sort of urine-eating bacteria in there (of course, if we did, I suspect there is enough urine in that alley to make the bacteria grow to the size of cats)? Ugh. I'm going to stop thinking about that now.

Monday, Oct. 23 5:25 am

I read that US envoy Alberto Fernandez retracted his comments to Al-Jazeera where he'd said: "undoubtedly there was arrogance and stupidity from the United States" when you look at the US policy in Iraq. He now says that he "misspoke" and that those comments don't represent his views. Ha. Yeah, I often call someone an "arrogant bastard" when I really meant to say "Good morning!" I can imagine trying to weasel out of shooting the finger at a fellow motorist by saying "Oh, I'm sorry. I meant to just show you my real cool wedding ring! I always misshoot my fingers. Darn me!"

No, I think he spoke his mind, but retracted only because he got a call from someone in the department who basically told him something like:

"Oh, Alberto. It is so terrible how you misspoke on US policy and how you were so terribly misunderstood and mistranslated, isn't it? I think the world just didn't understand, is all. Maybe you can explain this unfortunate mistake to the world? Yeah? So, how long have you been with the department? Really? And, I bet it's been real good for your family, huh? Yeah. Well, I hope we can continue to provide you with the best! Okay. Goodbye now!"

Yep. More like that.

Kids These Days

2006-10-19T10:19:00.000-07:00

I went to a kids birthday party the other night and, among other things, I met a lady who, I believe, could use the power of her conversational energy to lift off the shuttle. She talked about everything. Everything reminded her of something. And, as the kids' voices reached jet engine decibel levels, she kept right on talking, her words shredding in the air in front of her. I kept up with her for about 10 minutes when I suddenly realized I'd literally challenged Shaquille O'Neal to a one-on-one, and that I was not only bound to lose, but I might need to be carried out of there. Houses, schools, her husband's profession, houses, sororoties, kids, houses, remodeling, the athletic talents of kids, something about "suiciding" and something about "naming neighborhoods." Whew!

Now, let me say that she was a charming lady, intelligent, and quite good-looking and when I could get a word in, she did listen, so it wasn't anywhere near absolute hell talking to her. But, there needs to be some down time in conversation, time to think about what there is to actually contribute, and, also, one needs to not feel like one is throwing a brick wall in front of someone's full-momentum story just to say "Um, I need to go to the bathroom." However, I didn't know how to break away from her to give my ears and brain some rest. If I started to back away, she'd follow me. If I looked away, she spoke louder, or tapped me. I wondered if I just bolted out of the door, would she dive at my feet and tackle me?

Anyway, the down time came when the party MC asked all the kids, as they ate (oh, no) pizza, to each tell a CLEAN joke. Now, I know that kids are inherently funny, but I didn't realize that they actually had jokes sitting around in their heads, just waiting to come out if you ask them. I was very impressed with some of the jokes and, frankly, I realized that I couldn't even think of a clean one of my own, meaning that the squeaky kid in me has gone and now, the only joke I can think of involves a monkey, a bar, a cue ball, and a part of its anatomy. So, anyway, here's to kids and their clean funny jokes. I repeat some of them here:

How do you get a tissue to dance?
You put a little boogie in it!

Knock knock.
Who's there?
A cow goes.
A cow goes who?
You silly. A cow goes "moo"!

Why did the baseball players start spinning around?
To get ready for the whirl series!

and, my favorite:

A lady walks into a pet store and says to the pet store guy: "I would like a puppy for my daughter."
The pet store guy frowns and says, "Lady, we don't do trade-ins."

Another Little Pizza My Heart, Now Baby

2006-10-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

So, the gods that be must've heard my rant about pizza being a racket, about how it's dreadfully overpriced, and generally just a mess someone made on a piece of dough, and instead of those gods getting their revenge by conspiring to make me into a pizza by cosmically directing me in front of a speeding bus, they instead did the love thang to make me eat my words, with Italian sausage and eggplant.

See, we ordered a pizza for delivery this weekend, a large, and I grumbled like a bad stomach. I, of course, made some reference to the pizza cartel, and how I was wondering if I could just make monthly payments on the pizza to help the impact to my budget. And, as usual, no one was paying attention to me.

So, finally, the knock came and I did the long-legged lurch to the door. You know, the one that kids do when you tell them they have to come in now, and they scrunch up their faces and start walking all straight-legged, stomping and leaning, their stride making them look like their knees have suddenly frozen up and they whine and whimper and say "Aw, do I hafta??" (I do that when my wife tells me to come away from the liquor cabinet, actually.)

Anyway, I open the door, my frown on tight, and the pizza guy is there, smiling, holding the rare and exhalted pizza, his limo humming behind him.

I didn't return the grin. I just reached for my wallet.

And, at that moment, I thought I heard angels.

"Oh, sir, no need to pay."

"Huh?" I said.

"This one's on us! See, every now then, we give our regular customers a free pizza. This time, your number came up! No charge!"

"Huh?" I said. I felt my heart, to make sure I was still alive and that this wasn't some scene from Sixth Sense and the pizza guy suddenly wasn't going to sprout fangs and tell me something like "I deliver to this GRAVEYARD every night! You must be new here!"

Nope, he just handed me the pizza, which was actually hot and real. I opened the lid and no snake jumped out and no one said anything about Pranks and Practical Jokes. This was really happening.

"All yours, sir!" said the pizza guy. "On us!" He lifted on his toes and grinned. "Yep. Free!"

"Dude," I said. "Sorry about the blog." I knew he wouldn't get it, and he didn't, but I had to say it, to appease the gods.

"The what?" he said.

"Nothing." Then, I realized why he wasn't leaving, and why his grin was so wide.

I finally did get my wallet, and pulled out a five spot for the guy.

"Thanks!" he said, and he sprinted off. And, actually, his car wasn't a limo at all, but an old Toyota Celica that normal, nice people drive. Hmm. Must've been the light...

So, there you go. I get in a huff about something, and I'm proven goofy, in a most humbling way. I'd like to think that pizza joints everywhere were whispering about my blog the day after I'd ranted and that the cartel decided that "we're going to have to show that Jeremiah fella that we're just trying to make a living. We gotta put some love, and free pepperoni, in his heart. Yeah!"

But, it probably didn't go that way, but it did end up nicely. So, though I don't take back what I said about the pizza mafia, I do have to say, "alright, well, maybe there's a bright side. Fine."

One other thing, though, I thought was funny. Since this pizza joint does this free pizza thing regularly, I bet the delivery folks get an especially good tip when they deliver the free pizza. So, I bet up at the pizza joint, this causes some, um, "healthy competition" to be the one who gets to deliver the free pizza. In fact, I think the competition is pretty brutal and vindictive because, just as the driver was pulling away from my house, his car exploded.

Just kidding.

Poetry Friday!

2006-10-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

This week's word is "wish". My contribution to the word of the week is short. But, it means something big to me.

I remember when I was but a child, my little brother, we'll call him "Jezadiah," asked me what I'd do if I had three wishes. Well, being a kid and not, from what I could remember, ever knowing that there was a number higher than a million, I quickly said "A million dollars."

I had to think about the other stuff for a second. I finally said, "And a hundred dogs, and a million pounds of candy."

Then, I asked him. "What would you wish for?"

He looked at me and said, "A million dollars, the fastest car in the world. And.." he paused for a second, "three more wishes!"

I could only nod and grin. I think it was the first time I thought that maybe my little brother might, might, MIGHT be a little, little, LITTLE bit cool.

Turns out, he was a whole lot of cool, and smart, and funny. I someday hope I'll be cool enough to be his opening act!

One of my wishes now would be that everyone had a bro like Jez.

Northwest October Daze

2006-10-12T00:22:00.000-07:00

8:06 AM--Freeway! A friend of mine drew me up a way to commute to the Big Giant Software Giant that would most definitely take my stop start freeway stress and crumple it up and re-de-un-crumple it into a handful of silver lace butterflies that would flutter about my consciousness and I had visions of college parties where I "took something" and, sometime later, I was standing on a beach, shivering, and wondering if possibly I'd dreamed up my entire life up to this point. No, this new route was to carry me over winding rivers, verdant hooded hiways, through the shadow of state parks, and, most importantly, nowhere near the back of the Freeway Beast. Un-freaking-fortunately, I missed a crucial turnoff and, as a result, ended up on the back of the beast. One thing I did notice, though, as I lurched through the dewey commute--the fog descending upon (or rising from?) the freeway looked like the hem of angels' gowns, me a creepy crawly that had invaded the misty debutante dance of wispy beings and all my mortal eyes could focus on was the gentle wave of filigree tracers left by the slow dancers of the morning. I suddenly wanted to just go to sleep.

12:31 PM--Lunch at my desk. I have been gnawing on the same smoked chicken from the local Complete Foods Market since Monday. I have devoured both legs, a good bit of thigh, and am now working on the breast. It has been a strange relationship, me and this smoked chicken. I've needed to douse its meat with salt to get more than a burnt match taste out of it, and, in the nether reaches of its bones, I've encountered uncooked meat, which, on a chicken, spells Fun On the Toilet. I'll spare the details, except to say that maybe next week, when I visit the Wholesome Eats Market, I'm going to get the Completely Cooked Chicken from the section that actually had a lot of people buying from it, and I'm going to end my short, but torrid, affair with the toilet.

9:14 PM--The Gym. I'm lifting, admiring myself in the all-mirrored walls of the gym, sweat beading in my gray-speckled hair, and I realize that I have no idea why I'm doing this. I'm am far past the age where I can turn anyone's head that wouldn't turn unless I either physically reached out and turned their head, or, if they turned their head because I had something hanging out of a hole in my own head that should not have anything hanging out of it that isn't part of a piercing. Sure, I need to stay healthy, but I could do that with brisk goofy walking along the river, or with a strict fiber diet, or by spending a few minutes a day thinking about Rachel Ray. But, I pump on because if I don't, I go to the complete other extreme and think of myself as Jabba the Hut, before he dieted to look like the slim specimen that appeared in Star Wars (oh no, another Star Wars reference--is my geek showing?). So, now I look buff in a tank top as I buy milk and bacon at the local A&P and I can hold the hand basket with only one finger. And, if I wanted to, I could hoist a case of water on my shoulder and not even grunt loud enough for you to hear. And, really, when will I ever need to bench press something? "Honey, can you lie down and push this jar containing a lifetime supply of peanut butter over your head and then open it for me?" Not likely. But, I pump on.

Blog This!

2006-10-09T23:39:00.000-07:00

What my days need is some ubiquitous "Blog This!" button just floating around that, when inspired, I could push and, subsequently, whatever action I was performing at that time, or whatever thought fired past on a blue streak of light would get instantly uploaded to my blog, my poor neglected, big-eyed blog, my poor canvas-bag-wearing, trembling hand reaching out muttering "Guv-nah!" blog.(Speaking of blue streaks of light, remember that show "Fridays" which actually starred many future major players of "Seinfeld", like Julia Louis-Dreyfus, and Michael Richards, and Larry David, and Brad Hall, who ended up marrying Julia Louis-Dreyfus? Well, remember that guy who always took too many pharmaceuticals and ended up hallucinating and always saw mercurial flashes of light heading directly for his head, which made him duck violently? Then, he'd stand back up and ask whoever was standing near if they saw that flash of light and, of course they didn't because they were riding on a much lower cloud than he was and he'd consent to that fact and say "Yeah, I guess not. You would have seen THAT!")

So, because no one has invented a "Blog This!" button that I can plug into my life, then I have to imagine that one exists, so, today, I pretended I had one and, at random moments, I pushed it. Here are the results.

8:06 AM--The Park and Ride Mass Transit Station. It looks like I've missed the bus to work, which is roughly in the Dagoba System. I've missed it because every single clock I own has a different time on it, which assures that I'll always show up at a time when I shouldn't have. My car clock is 4 or 5 minutes fast. The clock on my stove actually seems to fluctuate between being fast and slow, probably due to the fact that it has had its share of burned meat fumes that I've subjected it to and is now effectively senile and crazed. Every now and then, it remembers the days of minutes actually being 60 seconds and not 5 seconds, a malfunction caused by the result of fumes I created when I experimented with what happens to a banana at 400 degrees. And, I can't find my watch. I lost it in the living room three months ago and, though I sometimes think I'm hearing it tick, I also sometimes hear the sound of squirrels in the walls, so, those sounds I take as just reminders that I need to refill my drink. My cell phone clock is usually right whenever I remember to charge it, which wasn't today. So, I have to actually drive to work again, and contemplate absolutely nothing because I'm going to be in traffic, moving at a speed that requires that I keep tapping the accelerator, and then suddenly hitting the brake at intervals just slightly shorter than the speed of thought. By the time I'm at work, my brain's so gnawed up, that I can't even remember where I sit.

11:34 PM--I check my email and realize that, over the last week, I've been the successful victim of a massive porn email spam invasion. And, in a way, it is deviously brilliant. I have spam filters to catch the usual porn language, but these evil spam rats have taken it one step further. They now populate their emails with "alternate" spellings of porn talk. So, I have a filter that will trash any email that contains the word "anal", for instance, which isn't a word that anyone I want to talk to uses in emails to me, even if it is part of the word "analyze" because no one I regularly correspond with has the time, or the brain cells left, to analyze anything more complicated than what's on tap. However, the porn scholars still get "anal" past my filters because they use spellings such as "aanal", "a-nal", etc. The possible combinations for every possible porn word boggles my hhead, and I realized that I was actually thinking of devising a filter to catch a majority of them, and I was scrunching up my face while doing so, which would have made for an interesting conversation had my wife asked me what I was so involved in thinking about.

"Well," I'd say, deliriously, "I was wondering--just how many ways are there to spell 'anal'?" Years of marriage will be called into doubt at that point.

What puzzles me, to the point of anger, is WHY are they trying to beat the porn filters? If I don't want to read any email with the words "loose cuties" in it, why the heck do they think that if they just spell it "lloose cu-tees" would I suddenly say "Hey! Now we're talkin'! I gotta see some movies about 'lloose cu-tees'. Woo weee! Finally, someone who gets my fetish!" Jeez.

Boy, this is getting long, isn't it? Maybe I've found a way to keep my blog up to date. Or, if nothing else, I've found a way to get you to help me devise a filter for "anal." I gotta go.

And I Quote, Part 7

2006-10-04T01:15:00.000-07:00

Things I actually said as an adult that I'd never have thought I'd ever say until I said them:

"You don't even care about my diarrhea, do you?"

To an American woman: "When you read that British newspaper, do you read it in a British accent?"

"Yeah, I love you. What time is it?"

"I must have fallen asleep next to the toilet."

"Do you mind if I do some Spanish on you?"

"Ear wax doesn't taste very good."

On Mediocrity

2006-10-02T23:49:00.000-07:00

Mediocrity. Long being used to not being much. That’s a sneaky thing, not wanting more, but wanting more. Wanting to be something unique, but not accomplishing anything unique. Getting praise without being praiseworthy. Mediocrity. Forgetting the smallest things, remembering great things, but repeating them for different audiences so that you can sound like you know a lot, but should those different audiences ever decide to converse among each other, they’ll find that you have an uncanny sense of repeating yourself with grandeur, and offering nothing new except an amazing ability to go into reruns.

Mediocrity. Seeing the potential, then avoiding it out of fear that someone might criticize. Watching people falter all around you, silently calling them on it, or, if they are large enough in the public eye, making broad, sweeping jokes at their expense and then, in the quiet of your bathroom shower, you reflect on the fact that you never even took the stage to even know what it was like to get booed off.

Mediocrity. Telling the world how good you are, grinning and exploding onto the scene, then riding their first impression until you can’t remember what they liked about you in the first place, so you lose your place, and then you are firing wildly, betraying the cool that you introduced yourself with.

You know a few chords on the guitar, you’ve read all the Hemingway novels, but none of Jane Austen’s. You can wax on the life of Virginia Woolf, but can’t remember which Bronte sister wrote which book. You have traveled just enough to say you’ve traveled, but nowhere near enough to say you have been a traveler, yet you think you are.

Music! Ah, do you make a big deal about how you love Ben Harper and Jack Johnson, and when someone asks you what you think of Bob Dylan and Woodie Guthrie, you stammer, trying to remember something other than “Serve Somebody” from Dylan and trying to remember anything from Guthrie.

Ah, sweet mediocrity. The Iraq war sucks! Bush is a moron! Oh, the order of sucession in the United States presidency? Um, let me Google that!

But, hey, the nearest three liquor stores are firmly etched in memory.

Planet Coach

2006-10-02T06:38:00.000-07:00

Oh my. I have been a bad blogger. No posts, no replies to comments. Nuthin. Quick, let me sacrifice a pencil to the blog gods (snap!) (ouch, a piece of pencil just dun went up my nose--what are the odds? that's what I get for sacrificing an innocent pencil and, did I just commit an act of heresy by suggesting that there is actually some dietic entity that holds blogs in the palm of its sweaty, cosmic hand and watches over us all, making sure that we blog daily or, if not, slink about in the shadows, feeling guilty that we've not been plugging up our hole in the blog dam, or damn blog, whatever mood you happen to be in that day? And, what penance must I pay for suddenly launching into a steam of consciousness rant, and, no I didn't mean to say "steam of consciousness" but I misstyped and took a look at that and figured, hey, "steam of consciousness" actually makes sense and it also conjures up a nice image of me hunched over my laptop, curls of white unfolding from my scalp and forming words in the sky, or, more likely, just a big question mark in the sky, which, apparently, brings us right back to gods.)

The flag football team I'm coaching won this weekend. They are the most spirited group of 8 and 9-year olds that I've ever seen, at least without sugar being involved. I am swelling with pride--no wait, that's the Whopper Jr. I ate yesterday--no, wait, yeah, that IS pride! These little men hustle and dart and I think I was smiling the whole game because my lips and cheeks were sore all day long yesterday. And, they call me Coach! The parents call me Coach! For plenty of men, this has already happened, but for me, I have to admit, I haven't coached anything before this year, and now, people are calling me "coach" when they address me, and a little tune starts playing in my head and it's so catchy that I just stand there and nod to it, and smile and sprain my lips again. I like being called "coach." I think I'm going to call myself Coach. "Hey, Coach, let's scratch ourselves now!" or "Man, Coach, you sure can coach, Coach!" Also, I now have official license to boldly, and uabashedly yell out such coachisms as "Way to go!" "Take Off!" "That's how ya do it!" "Hustle up!" and, my all-time favorite, "You boys left it on the field today!"

Alright. Enough of me. I just thought I'd write a postcard from my head. Having a great time in here! The weather's fine, but just a little steamy, Coach.

Some People Should NOT Have Sharpies

2006-09-26T01:29:00.000-07:00

I was driving around today and, within two blocks, encountered two homemade signs that made my day (weird). One sign was an advertisement for a yard sale. First there was the address of the sale, and then, on the next line, the fetching phrase "Nothing Sucks." I made a mental note that, even if something did end up sucking at that sale, I was going to be there to see it suck for myself. I'd even buy something just because of the show, like you toss a dollar in the street performer's violin case. As an aside, I've always secretly wished that some usually very sober retail establishment, like Sears or Target, would curse in their ads. I'd love to see Target's Sunday ad say "Best Damn Back to School Sale In Town!" or have Sears tell me "Get Your Ass Over to Sears Right Now if You Want In On This Sale!"

The other sign came a block later, just as I was still grinning from the last one. This one was another drunkenly-scrawled sign in front of a used car dealership. It read: "We Buy Cash For Cars." Speaking of sucking, as I attempted to interpret that sign, there suddenly came a huge sucking sound as all the foundations for logic in my brain just simply imploded. I'm still having trouble with those words. Tell you what, I'm going to go have another martini and see if it all comes clear...

La Pizza Nostra

2006-09-24T00:22:00.000-07:00

So, I was sitting there enjoying my $2.95 slice of pizza and I realized that I'm eating a TWO NIN-EY FIVE DOLLAH SLICE A PIZZA and I'm realizing that I may have just found yet another racket.

See, I keep a list of rackets. I call them rackets because they are the various economic gotchas in this world that we, for some reason, sit back and deal with, as the racketeers slowly screw our thumbs. We peel money out of our linty pockets and pay money to these rackets, each dollar disintegrating in a flaming poof. The poof sound, though, is often drowned out by a disembodied giggle sound. That giggle is coming from the racketeer, who can't believe that you will actually pay three bucks for a slice of pizza, but who will continue to charge it to you as long as you continue to pull your wallet out in a trance and fling your money into their satin-lined pockets, and they won't even do a dance for you.

Pizza is nothing but a cheap mess that you make on some flattened dough. It used to be the perfect date/party food for me to make during my "Yeah, I'll Take $1.17 of Gas, Please" years. All I needed to do when someone was coming over was to buy a prepared pizza shell and then just throw my leftovers in it and add tomato sauce and cheese and, VEE-OLA, I had pizza. My guests/dates would eat it and smile and say, "Wow, this is great! What kind of pizza is it?" And I'd want to say "Well, it's a bologna, chop suey, fried chicken, birthday cake, and mac and cheese pizza! That'll be $3 a slice!" Instead, I just said, "Oh, secret recipe that Mom used to make, while she was in the Pizza Mafia!"

If you screw up dinner, don't fret. Just dump it on some dough, smother it with cheese, and bellow "Hey Family, guess what? Daddy just made some...[snicker]...pizza! Come and get it! And, don't ask any questions!"

So, I'm adding pizza to the list of rackets. I've seen $18 large pizzas at the local hoity toity pizzarias in town, and a mess on dough that you charge 18 bucks for qualifies as a RACKET. And, by the way, why does adding "ria" to your store name give you the right to hike up the price of everything by five bucks? I can just see going into a place to buy some water and getting charged 6 bucks for a bottle and getting a little irate and the waifish cashier with the twenty-ton attitude shrugging and saying "Hey, THIS place is a water-ria. You can take your unhip self down to the 7-11 if, I don't know, you're a little down on your luck this week and can't afford the BEST water."

So, there.

By the way, in case you were wondering, here are my top five rackets:

Plumbing. Just to have a plumber come over and say, "Hi, I'm the plumber" costs as much as a night out, with a babysitter. If you go nuts and actually have them touch one of your pipes (DON'T insert lewd thought here), then, if you listen carefully, you can hear your bank account flushing.
Cereal. This has gotten better, but, still, five bucks for some sugar coated corn is problematic. I think Kellog used to be a stand-up who kept getting booed offstage and is now exacting his revenge.
Real estate/investment seminars. Now, if getting rich was so simple, why are these guys touring the country, doing seminars, and selling tapes on how you too can get rich instead of them just sitting at home and just going about their business of getting rich? You don't see Bill Gates going around telling people how to start a massive tech company do you? No. These seminars ARE what get these people rich. Come to my seminar and I'll tell you how they do it.
Pizza. See above.
Cruise ships. They don't let you bring your own alcohol on board, but will gladly sell it to you at prices that are usually about half your salary, in drinks that wouldn't get a lab rat drunk. Meanwhile, you get to stop at ports of call that, in comparison, sell alcohol for free.

Okay, I'm done. Gotta go. My half-a-Big Mac pizza is done.

Poetry Friday

2006-09-22T06:22:00.000-07:00

I've missed a couple of these due to not-being-myself-ness caused by various stages of employment and, well, not-being-able-to-get-up-in-the-morning issues. It is only fitting that the word is "morning" this week. What's even weirder is that the amazing Mona came up with the word while channelling Frank Sinatra. Now, last week's word was "pennies" and I had the idea of doing a mock audio duet with Frankie singing "Pennies From Heaven", but I never did. Lo and behold, Frankie comes to the surface anyway to provide this week's word (insert Twilight Zone music here).

So, anyway, here's my bit, just a little musing on a morning:

This morning, the sun still came up. The crinkly, cool edge of fall bent the horizon this way and that, changing how the wind falls and how the morning feels upon your skin, how the cool is now a serious cool, not the playful, relieving cool of a summer morning after a little summer night rain, and not like the blissful cool of an evening summer wind rolling in over the northwest Pacific waves, making you doubt that short-sleeved shirt you wore, but yet, stopping it's journey to your bones just underneath your skin, making you shudder in the hint of passing cold, in the lightning flash of something that might have happened, if they sky wasn't so in love with you.

This morning, I thought of a new place to work, a place that will be strange to me for several mornings in a row. A place where the faces will have to burn new memories in my head, where I'll have to play personality tag until each of us has decided who's the bigger IT and who is the one doing the entertaining, and who is the one being entertained, or who is the one doing the aggravating, and who is the one aggravated. So much morning energy spent at the public leaning post called the coffee machine, wrestling with muted opinions or casual pleasantries, all prerequisites to the arguments and judgments in our future. A day will come when we won't see each other ever again, and you ask if all those morning conversations were just wasted words, all those connections and head-thrown-back-laughs, all those opinions and debates, all of them just noisy rain that keeps you awake in the morning.

Morning, though, is all we have. It is our white-gloved doorman to the day. If the night was rough, our morning doorman is too, his scraggly beard poking our eyes, making us curse our awakening. If our night was peaceful, maybe on the cusp of lovemaking, our morning doorman is gentle, pulls open the night for us to pass into the day, and even may rest a white-gloved hand on our shoulders as we stroll to the floor and smell the sunrise.

Morning is all we have to insure us that the night was just a dream. Morning is all we have to welcome us to another chance to fix things. Morning is all we have, good or bad, to say to us, "Yes, you're still here. And, you're still welcome here." Good Morning.

Props to the C-Hunter

2006-09-20T00:35:00.000-07:00

I grew up watching Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom, with Marlin Perkins, and watching Jacques Cousteau specials and I was soberly educated by those guys' interaction with the beasts, but it wasn't until Steve came along that I participated vicariously in the man/wild interplay, and Steve's brash approach that basically said: "Come on, Mr. or Miss Poisonous/Deadly Beast, let's all just get along. Let me do my thing, and, in the end, we'll both be stars here. How 'bout it, mate?" was intoxicating. His show was one of the few in my "watching kid shows with the kids" years that I really paid attention to, and possibly enjoyed even more than my kids did.

His respect and love for the wild came through in his delightful interaction with the gnashing teeth and bared fangs of nature, and, in all honesty, I never got the same thing from Perkins and Cousteau, who seemed like nothing more to me than college professors getting dirty. I got a little delight from Jack Hanna's schtick on the talk shows, but though he clearly loved his job, I got no hint of personality from him beyond the "Aw, shucks," variety. Steve was the best of them all. He was all animal lover, and all showman. Unlike the staunch scholars, he seemed to treat nature as his golden playpen, not just as his "ahem--field of serious study and careful observation." He's not likely to be topped.

My kids and I loved you, Steve. "She's BEAU-IH-FUL!" was a constant exclamation around our house. And still will be. My man, you were the best. I'll never hear the word "crocodile" again without thinking of you.

You were BEAU-IH-FUL! Your family, and the whole world of conservationalists, should be very, very proud of you.

So long. Goddammit...

Too Much Blood In My Coffee Stream

2006-09-19T00:58:00.000-07:00

One thing I've kept somewhat hidden, until apparently now, is the tactile pleasure I get from rolling certain objects in my fingers and palms. I think I've blogged at some point about how I love to put pens in my mouth, especially the steely, smooth, cool tips of some pens.. I love the feel of heavy pens in my hand as I write random words and watch them form in clean-flowing ink. I write words like "goombay" and "waddlish", which make perfect sense while you are writing them. "Mooshka" and "bladdidip", "froshtish" and "gladdah" all have some sort of playful meaning. "You need to kick the mooshka out of that ball, if you ever expect to ascend to the next level of gladdah." They, by the way, also crack up the kids when I write them, and pronounce them as I write, and even do a little dance with my large head.

I also love those silver, metal Chinese balls that ding-a-ling when you roll them in your palms. They feel so good, and they are a balm for the skin and the imagination, all cold steel and perpetual surface. And, they ding! I put them to my cheeks, to my ears, and then I shake them, just so that I can hear that ding. There's nothing like it, really. I can't think of anything I can shake like that, and get a satisfying, muted, musical sound from, though, I also must admit, I like to shake spray paint cans so that I can hear that dry rattle from inside the can. Whoever invented the spray can rattler should get a star on the walk of fame. That rattle is so amazingly satisfying. I wish that other products would adopt that. I sometimes imagine that there is a rattle in my head and that, if I shake my head, it would rattle like a spray paint can, or ding like the metal Chinese balls. Maybe I can start a new fad. Have the unused, or college party ruined parts of my brain cleared out so that I can put a few dry beans in my skull, thereby providing a soundtrack to the otherwise innocuous action of nodding yes, or shaking my head no.

But, I digress, again.

Nothing, I should say, as we all read this on screen, is more satisfying than holding a book. Flipping pages, running your hands along the unevenly cut pages (my favorite books are those where no two consecutive pages have been cut to the same width, thereby giving a ragged appearance to the pages), holding its weight, smelling its paper. I sometimes pick up a book just to hold it. My palms spread across the cover and my fingers just jut into a random page, and I read a random line, for no reason except to spend a second with some thick paper and some collection of words. I could drown in a bookstore, which is why I sometimes avoid them. But, as Bob Marley said, "The stone that the builder refuses shall be the head cornerstone." So, resisting bookstores only dooms me to one day sneak behind the shelves and spread out my sleeping bag and go on ahead and live in the place. Bookstores around here have coffee shops complete with pastries, so, survivial is possible. It would be the perfect remedy for having too much blood in your coffee and donut-stream.

Q and A with Jeremiah

2006-09-14T21:45:00.000-07:00

So, J, did you ever find a job?

Why, yes, I did. I started a contract-to-hire job with a small tech company just outside of town.

So, why are you not smiling?

Well, because, two days into the job, the Big Giant Software Giant called and offered me a job too.

Whoa! Cool!

Well, the small tech company was very happy to have me and their outgoing guy was spending his last two days training me on all the things he's done over the last four years, which no one else could train me on. People were grinning like mad that I was there.

So?

So, then the Big Giant Software Giant calls and, well, I'd be dumb as a rock to not accept the offer. In fact, I did accept the offer.

Uh oh. Now what?

Now I have to tell the small tech company that I'm going to have to jump the ship.

And...?

And that makes me feel like a louse. No, actually, it makes me feel like a six-foot-tall louse, with a Pittsburgh Steelers cap on. I'm leaving them in the lurch. They thought they had their replacement guy. Can you smell the smoke of bridges burning?

But, the Big Giant Software Giant is far more prestigious and represents the pinnacle of your career.

Yeah, well, I also feel like I've betrayed a company that put its trust in me.

So, you were laid off from the last two jobs you had, right?

Yeah.

Do you think maybe THEY betrayed the trust you had in them?

Two wrongs don't make a right.

Well, but, two slaps upside the head DO make a lesson learned. You gotta play the game like they play the game, homie.

Those guys at the small tech company were really nice, though.

And so are you, nature boy.

There's no room for nice people in the corporate world, is there?

Nope, starry eyes. Good luck at the Big Giant Software Giant.

Fundamentals of Humor, Part 6

2006-09-12T00:40:00.000-07:00

The humorous construction "(Determiner) (noun) is not going (infinitive) itself" is a very common way to juxtapose the expected operation or function of an object with a situation in which you are either trying to terminate a conversation in a humorous manner, or if you are trying to point out the absurdity of that particular object actually acting upon itself to produce the result which it is designed to produce. In other words, you are assigning human propulsion to an inanimate object, which is a technique that can form the basis for several forms of humor.

Consider the following examples:

"Well, gotta go. My dinner isn't going to eat itself!"

"Ah, excuse me, but my teeth aren't going to brush themselves!"

"I should head over to surgery now. This appendix isn't going to remove itself!"

As you see, there are more than a few humorous advantages to using this construction, and the possibilities may seem endless, depending upon your powers of observation, timing, and situational appropriateness, as with any form of humor.

However, a caveat for those who may use this construction without some amount of forethought: make sure that the expected action of the object of your humorous focus cannot actually function as an instrument of automation.

Consider the following example:

"Well, this has been an enlightening conversation between the stall walls, but, I've got to go. This toilet isn't going to flush itself!"

This construction may lose its effectiveness because, in reality, there now exist toilets that indeed DO flush themselves. These toilets represent an annoying addition to our daily lives, however good the intentions, which stem from the fact that we no longer want to touch the flushing appendages of toilets, despite years of touching them without any serious repercussions or toilet flushing ailments of the finger tips. Those that are in fear of these ailments do have the option of wrapping toilet tissue around their hands and then proceeding to flush. Or, they can use the bottom of their shoe, which they then promptly parade into their house and place among their children, pets, and other innocent clothes without regard for the fact that you used those rouge shoes to flush a toilet in the bus station.

But, that is all beside the point. The point is that I am glad that someone decided to include an "emergency flush release button" next to the sensory element of self-flushing toilets so that those of us who find it necessary--sometimes for the continued survival of anyone else in the bathroom--to deploy a manual flush. Sadly, some toilet manufacturers have not updated their sensory equipment with the manual flush release, thereby causing some sitters to weave in an embarrassing serpentine manner in order to trigger the automatic flush, which, of course, never works, except to help you create an elegant toilet dance that no one will ever see anyway, but you know would make you a star on the performance art circuit if you had the guts to perform it in public.

Anyhow, I leave you with the suggestion to use the above construction to entice a light moment from a conversation, with only a slight, but important, consideration for our automated society, if you hope to extract the maximum effect from your humor.

Thank you, and, as always, keep them laughing until they stop.

Footbawl!

2006-09-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

The first big slate of NFL games begins today and me and my newly-turned-9-year-old are reserving two parking spots in front of the TV for the morning/afternoon. He loves football, just like the old dude, so we are a unified front in the house. We have an impenetrable argument--dad spends quality time with the boy, explaining the game--thereby "interacting", and I get to watch my beloved football. In between, we have "contact" via handslaps, hugs, and faux tackling onto the couch (in the opposite direction of the beer/root beer, of course, or, hopefully). So, we win!

See, if I was just trying to watch the games alone, suddenly, the tree out back will drop a thousand leaves, weeds will erupt in the garden, shelves and cabinets will fall apart, and a layer of grime will appear over every surface of the house, all needing immediate attention right when the 4th quarter begins.

So, since we have the clearance, the plan is as follows:

I don my Dallas Cowboy rally cap--the boy gets on his Seahawk shirt. We go out back and run some patterns and, forgetting that it is still only 9am and we are surrounded by neighbors, we will yell "Touchdown!" and "Awww! You gotta catch those!" way too loud and risk getting pelted by last night's wine bottles.
I thaw out the pork ribs and brisket that my best buddy sent up from Texas this week. My level of drool increases because, now, football and authentic barbeque are in my future and drool is reaching critical mass, so that if something happens like someone showing me Denise Richards' photo, I will drown in my drool.
At gametime, we park for the kickoff. Five minutes later, two-hundred dishes suddenly become dirty and I have to rush back and forth to tend to them.
The barbeque is ready and we eat so ravenously that sauce gets on the TV and in our hair.
We run out of beer/root beer and have to make a halftime trip to the store, which always takes longer than halftime.
I go to the computer to check my fantasy football team's score, and wince at the fact that I'm way behind and I wonder why I even bothered to play this year.
By day's end, the Cowboys, the Seahawks, and my fantasy team have all won, thanks to my rally cap and my son's t-shirt, and of course, our relentless yelling at the TV/computer screen.
The TV remote suddenly goes missing and, in the next second, a Tivo-ed episode of Oprah is on. Also, both the boy and I are miraculously holding garden rakes and being shoved out the door. We grin and slap hands and wave at all the other guys on the block suddenly raking THIER yards.

God, I love football Sundays!

Oh, My Aching Job Search

2006-09-07T11:13:00.000-07:00

So, yeah, it's been a while since I've posted, due to the fact that my mood resides somewhere between Hades and the Earth's lower mantle. It didn't help that Steve Irwin died. Me and my boys watched him religiously as they (and I) grew up, and I used to crack them up with my Crocodile Hunter impersonations. As likely as it was that the wild would finally claim him, it saddens the hell out of me that it did. I'm tired of seeing the most humane of humans be violently removed from this planet. I'd climb on my roof and scream if my roof didn't have a nearly 80 degree incline.

But, anyway, I've been interviewing at the Big Giant Software Giant (Did I Mention Giant?) whose name I will not mention. Things look halfway decent for a contract position, which is like plugging the hole in the ship with a baguette. But, hey, I need to work.

My biggest issue is having to put on a tie to interview. I am possibly the only man in the world who looks bad in a nice suit. Hell, even mass murders look good in the suits that they wore in the courtrooms. When I saw Scott Petersen in court, I thought, "Man, now there goes a goddamn evil, hateful, stupid, worthless man who doesn't even deserve to have lived long enough to make it to court, but, look at him in that suit!"

In a nice outfit, with my hair cut, and my shoebox physique, I look like some grotesque Trinidad carnival mask. I am so self-conscious in a tie that I have to overcome MYSELF in an interview before I even work on answering the question.

Solemn interviewer: "So, Jeremiah, why do you think you are the best qualified for this position?"

Me: (Internal conversation): "Man, this tie is choking me. Is it crooked? I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror just a few minutes ago and I looked like a giant Q-tip®, sticking out of a drawstring bag. My head was the size of a pumpkin. And, is there somewhere I can donate a portion of my forehead to those less fortunate to have a full head of forehead? I remember back in school when the kids used to say 'Jeremiah doesn't have a forehead--he has a FIVE-head.'"

Me: (What I actually say): "If I could rip off this tie, pull my shirt out of my pants, and sit back in the chair, I'd really be able to formulate real words, but, for now, I'm just going to unleash a nice long gag, if you don't mind. You're welcome to read my resume while I'm gagging."

No, actually, things have gone well, as can be expected. I'll push on. And, I promise to be better at letting those who care know what I'm pushing. One thing, though: I wish I could never worry about the man again. Meanwhile, I'm headed off to study for another interview. Maybe I should apply to the Q-tip folks...

Hand is the Word

2006-08-25T14:21:00.000-07:00

This has been a strange week for me, but I thought I'd get in on the poetry word, which is "hand." Here's my bit. Have a weekend!

Hand is an appropriate word for me today because, yesterday, I had one person's hands on me more than I've have in a long while.

No, I didn't "get lucky."

I "got a haircut."

It's job search time and that is usually the only time I go in for a haircut. The rest of the time, I'm busy growing my dreadlocks. The jobs I eventually get don't mind the dreadlock look (well, I didn't used to think they did), so I wait until I have a job before I grow the locks. I'm diligent about keeping the locks clean and short--they're nowhere near looking like Bob Marley's rop (though, one day, when I'm free of the Man, they will never be cut again and, consequently, may just get damned ropy).

However, on a job search, interviewers can't keep their eyes from straying to the locks. It's like a lady wearing an Uma Thurman one-piece skin-suffocating suit to an interview for a high level corporate position--you can't tell the interviewers a thing that they'll actually listen to because your look has already spoken, and is now humming in their ears like high-voltage wires. You could say "And I came up with an idea that tripled the profits in our department last year," and all they'll hear will be "Pop! Buzzz! Hummmm! Crackle! Zip! Fizzz!"

So, off go the locks. And, the barber was more than happy to shave them off, or, as he said as his hands probed my locks "clean you up, young man." So, his hands went in, they went out, they tightened and loosened just in my periphery as he lectured me about how I need to stay cleaned up. His hands pushed my head sideways, up, and down, to give him the proper angle on the clear-cutting of my personality. Sometimes, his hands formed into fists as he proclaimed that the black man still has a long way to go and that he needs to stay clean. "Gotta play the game," he said. "And, one of the rules is you keep that head clean. Ain't no company going to send you to represent them in China with your hair looking like that, no matter who you are, especially not you!"

Of course, I listened. I was, in effect, getting a scolding. And, I took it, because, see, I'm 41 and he's 73. He, by default, knows more than I do. Add on that he's got multiple thousands of dollars in land, and his own successful business and, well, I'm in shut-up and listen mode, just like I am when my dad talks to me.

So, I listened. And, his hands did a dance. A dance of defiance, a dance of definitiveness, a dance of urgency, and a dance of molding. He gripped my head, not only to turn it so that he could off my dreads, but also as if he was trying to mold some sense into my brain, stretch and pull those neural pathways, get some circulation going on up there.

I grudgingly agreed with nearly everything he said, even though I don't generally live my life according to the precepts he was putting forth. See, I'm 41 and he's 73. He, by default, has a perspective that, no matter how much I respect, I may never grasp until I too am 73. But, I have to bow to his knowledge, and his well-meaning teaching.

And, so, in gratitude for his wisdom, however homespun, I gotta give him a hand.

Free Agent

2006-08-22T14:02:00.000-07:00

So, here I was all prepared to write a post about the latest airline no-no concerning bringing gels and such as carry-ons. The post was going to have jokes involving, among other things, having problems getting Sen. Edward Kennedy and "body part augmentations" on board planes, and one joke was going to have a punchline that included "explosive diarrhea." Then, there was going to be some "but, seriously, folks" denouement about how airline security is a big deal and how we should grudgingly accept it all, and just secretly long for the day when we'll just all have to board a plane nekkid, and that would spur an idea about a new and exciting airline, and that would wrap everything up nicely and be a post to raise a half-grin about.

Instead, today, I found out that I have been laid off. No worries, I suppose. It's all business. A tech writer doesn't generate much revenue in a small company, so, in essence, my work is done there.

I now sit around and ponder my future, as millions before me have done. This is my second layoff in as many years, but this one is going to make me think a little harder about things. So, I assume the position of Rodin's famous sculpture (with a beer can in the non-chin-holding-up hand) and I ponder. You may just be lucky enough to participate in some of my ponderings.

"Broken" indeed.

Broken Singing

2006-08-18T09:45:00.000-07:00

So, here's my contribution to Poetry Friday, in honor of the word "broken". It's a song I wrote yesterday (but, I've been working on the riff for a couple of days now) and it's in demo mode and, as a warning, I can't play guitar or sing. So, it's mercifully short.

It's kind of hard to hear the words, so here they are:

I really want you to come over
and hear what my soul releases.
I need you to help me forget
that I'm broken in a thousand pieces.

I'm all broken now.
But I'm trying to get it together.
I'm all broken now.
But I won't be broken forever.

(Repeat)

Poetry Word O' The Week, and Some News

2006-08-17T06:45:00.000-07:00

Hey. Okay, here is the Word of the Week, chosen only because it just came into my head one day and I said it over and over again and, for some reason, it softened me up and made me feel about 5 years old.

It's "broken".

Write, photograph, or draw about that word for this week's Friday exercise. Added points for writing a song about it and posting that, with teenage girls mouthing the words. I'll buy the CD if you post a rap about that word. I'll pay your gas for a year (and your bail) if you streak across the set of the Today show yelling that word and giving Matt Lauer a big smooch.

By the way, in the second biggest news story of the day (the biggest, to me, is always the fact that we are still in Iraq), the JonBenet Ramsey killer is caught. When I told my wife, she said the same thing I thought when I heard the news: "It wasn't the parents?" I wonder how many million people thought they did that to their daughter? It's not out of the realm of possibilities, certainly, seeing what some parents have done to their kids. But this case was marred by assumed guilt of the parents and it's a sad commentary on where our society has come that we can ("we" including myself) actually convince ourselves that a parent could do such a thing to their child, even if we have no proof. I feel like apologizing.

Bus-piration

2006-08-16T10:06:00.000-07:00

This morning, the bus smells like ginger Chanel Number 5 Yves Lagerfeld, and sage Obsession and patchouli foot breath and henna shampoo with breakfast meats and toothpaste and Sure and sunshine on Oriental lilies and the cigarette-smoky sweat of the girl in front of me who looks like she's enjoying the spiced sprinkles of the ugly pretty bus world's airbourne hors d'oeuvres.

Gimme a Gimmick

2006-08-15T00:00:00.000-07:00

I'm pondering new blog gimmicks. Famous, well-read blogs all have a gimmick. This is one of my favorites, as well as Married to the Sea, which I have a link to over on the left side of my blog there. So, the bar is raised. Unfortunately, my brainstorming has only created a disaster area of ideas, but I should share them, huh? Maybe the gimmick will be how skewed and poisoned my thinking really is. Some of my latest ideas:

What Happened to My Foxgloves? Each day, I blog about the fact that I planted about 20 foxgloves and none of them, thus far, have emerged. I will describe the area of my garden that should be sprouting those proud cottage garden flowers, but which, instead, has become a nice place for dandelions to vacation and take photos with other dandelions and the occasional morning glory tourist. Then, I will chronicle my brutal assault upon both of those intruders which will go down in weeding history as being the darkest of times for weed propogation.

That Girl on the Bus There's this girl on the bus who always wears something so wonderfully earthy and who manages to not wear makeup as well as any girl who actually does wear makeup. She does nothing but seek out a seat and stare out of the window for the whole ride downtown, but, at some point, she makes a face at something she's thinking or crinkles her face at a song on her iPod and she rips it out of her pocket and changes the song like she was a bolt of lightning. It's like she was listening to the Dead Kennedys and, suddenly, Air Supply came on. Priceless! To no one but me!

What My Sons Did Every day, my sons do something outrageous. Yesterday, one of my sons came in the house and said this: "Dad. I was just doing something with my shoe and now it's on the roof." HaWooo!

What the Girl at the Coffee Stand Said I have to get coffee from the girl who works in a stand near my building because she always says something. Yesterday, she said she would never go to South Florida because it was "two billion degrees there yesterday."

Oh, High School I could talk about how something I did, said, saw, or heard today reminded me of my golden high school years. I could wax nauseatingly nostalgic as, for example, I recall how the smell of the restroom at the park today reminded me of the time in high school when my friend M_ made a water balloon out of pee and, one Saturday night, threw it out of his car window at a group of jocks who, to this day, are probably still vowing to "shred" whoever did that!

Words that Are Funny In the wonderful movie The Sunshine Boys, with Walter Matthau and George Burns, Matthau made the statement that "Words with the letter 'K' in them are funny. 'Apple.' Not funny. 'Pickle.' Funny." In subsequent home testing, I've drinkingly found that such words as "chicken" and "muckle" are indeed funny, but you've also got words like "pants" and "elbow" and "buzzard" that have no 'k' but are still funny. I would explore such funny words on a daily basis, and even attempt to come up with odd phrases that are also funny, like "chicken pants" or "butt fever."

Yeah, I know. Back to the lab again.

(chicken butt)

Mass Poetry

2006-08-11T09:22:00.000-07:00

The word to poeticize upon today is "mass." So, a ten-minute free write is in order (forgive it for it knows not an edit):

Huddling Mass

"You would look good in ashes," was what she said, finally, after I'd tried hard to get her to speak. Doris lay there, her face sunken, her body seemingly just another lump in the sheets that covered her. Light burst in from the window where I'd pulled back the curtain and it lay across her shattered legs. The nurse had just left, changing the IV, taking her temperature, checking her pulse, and leaving a glass of water and three pills in a cup. Doris took the pills like a good girl and slumped back to the pillow to refocus her eyes, still hazy, on the ceiling.

"I would what?" I said, leaning closer.

She moved her eyes to me, but they still remained focus on the ceiling above me.

"You would look good in ashes. And a baseball cap made of ice. An ice cap. Get it? Ice cap, like polar ice caps. And, a gown of ashes. And, on your lapel, a huddling mass of ants, like a mum."

I shuddered. "Oh, Doris, you are delirious."

"Yes I am," she said.

I sat back.

"Tell me why I'm here again," she said.

I sighed. "I've told you three times already."

"Tell me four. Four hundred. Then I'll believe it."

"You jumped from the balcony."

"Whose balcony?"

I sighed again. "Aunt Linda's."

"How far?"

"Doris..."

"How far?"

"Three stories."

"Wasn't enough, huh?"

"Doris..."

"Next time, three hundred stories," she said.

I wanted to tell her that no building is that tall, but I didn't want to encourage her delerium. She was so given to delusions. She was such a dear.

"I remember where I landed," Doris said.

I was a little shocked. She had, up to this point, said she remembered nothing except going to the liquor cabinet and drinking down the last half bottle of vodka, then waking up in the ambulance, feeling crumpled, and full of electricity, as she called it.

"Where did you land?"

"Right on an ant bed."

"Oh, yeah," I said. The doctors had said, just to complicate matters, she had over a hundred red ant bites on her face. They'd gotten inside her nose, in her mouth, in her ears, and they bit away. Hordes of them. And, she had a nervous reaction, so her face swelled, doubling, nearly, the swelling that she caused by slamming her face on the ground from a thirty foot fall. Poor Doris. She was such a dear.

"I saw them up close, all those mandibles, clicking and clacking."

"You remember that?" I said, leaning forward to brush her forehead. Her pale face was still pocked with ant bites.

"A mass of them. Clicking and clacking, saying rude shit."

"Doris..."

"They wouldn't shut up," she said, her voice getting strained now.

"Doris, please. Get some rest. Dad will be here soon. He'll want to see you well, not delerious."

"The whole time, chatter chatter, saying the same damn thing over and over again."

"Doris..."

"They just said 'You would look good in ashes. And a baseball cap made of ice. An ice cap. Get it? Ice cap, like polar ice caps. And, a gown of ashes. And, on your lapel, a huddling mass of ants, like a mum.'"

I moaned. "Oh, Doris. You are delerious."

"Next time I jump," she said, closing her eyes. "I want to land in a mass of people. Not ants. Ants are rude. Rude, rude, rude."

She lay quiet then, poor Doris.

I began to sniffle. You did land on a mass of people, Doris. The tears came strong then.

You landed right on us, Doris. Right on us.